The power of story in a world on fire: reflections on the transformational power of narratives

The second of our R:ETRO (Reputation: Ethics, Trust, and Relationships at Oxford) webinars for Michaelmas term 2021, hosted by Alan Morrison, Professor of Law and Finance, and Rita Mota, Intesa Sanpaolo Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, at Oxford Saïd. For more information on the R:ETRO webinar series, see https://oxsbs.link/3HM1wzB. Guido Palazzo, Professor of Business Ethics, HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne, discusses 'The power of story in a world on fire: reflections on the transformational power of narratives'. Abstract: How do societies change? While this question might have been interesting only for historians in the past, the ecological crisis has made it one of the most urgent questions to answer. In fact, it might be that the survival of humankind as such depends on finding the right answers. The Enlightenment had established the firm belief that humanity advances through an individual (Kant) or societal (Hegel) learning process based on reason. At the beginning of the 21st century, this belief turns out to be overly optimistic. Reason is under pressure on various frontlines: postmodern philosophy has deconstructed the idea of truth and the climate emergency has demonstrated the motivational limits of abstract reason(s). Scientists pile up study over study on the emergency of climate action and assume that people (and societies in general) react to these new environmental conditions and adapt their behaviour and processes. However, most people simply don’t care. Established routines of production and consumption do not only not change, they even keep accelerating the crisis: half of the CO2 that humankind ever produced was emitted after Al Gore’s first book on the environmental crisis over only the last 30 years. How do societies change? How can we actively transform them towards economic practices that are better aligned with the limits of the planet? I will investigate one path that since Plato already has b