This article uses a structural narratology approach to define four archetypal fables concerning managers and organizations, based on whether the narrative involves growth or decline for the protagonist and growth or decline for the organization which the protagonist leads. This approach is applied to three cases: a celebratory-political narrative about the Conservative Party of Canada's victory in the 2011 federal election; Charles Ferguson's Academy Award-winning documentary ‘Inside Job’ about the 2008 financial meltdown; and the ideological-polemical narratives of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States. The article concludes that narrative analysis helps us understand the structure of these stories and helps us examine and question the assumptions about economic causation that they incorporate.
