The practice of telling stories as communication presents new ethical concerns for communicators:

• Telling a person’s life story — narrated by an organization — can impact their narrative agency (the ability to make independent decisions about how they see the world and their place in it)

• A power dynamic is always present between a nonprofit and someone who benefits from the nonprofit, creating the potential for unintended exploitation

• When certain types of stories can translate to financial gain (e.g. donations), an organization can find its operational needs in opposition to ethical storytelling practices

Organizational storytelling sits at the intersection of communications: creating narrative text, but using it to benefit an organization. The best practices communicators borrowed from journalism and media don’t extend to the ethical issues that are raised by this specific practice, including narrative agency, identity and exploitation.

Narrative theory provides informative critique and modeling & simulation practices reveal a path forward.

Ethical storytelling requires investment in internal systems and processes to establish ethical practices — and protect them when there is pressure to produce stories.