The Hero Doesn’t Always Win: Reviving Picaresque Stories as a Pedagogical Tool for Management Education

Management education is a storytelling endeavor. The stories told in case studies and textbooks often follow a hero narrative, where a manager or organization triumphs against the odds. However, this essay argues the structure of hero narratives removes complexity and disconfirming information, therefore failing to prepare students for workplace realities. I therefore explore possibilities of a form of story first developed in medieval Spain, known as the picaresque, as a pedagogical tool for management education. By comparing and contrasting hero and picaresque stories of Steve Jobs at Pixar Animation, I show how the picaresque presents a nonlinear and fragmented portrait of life in organizations, offering management educators a pedagogical tool for developing critical thinking skills and exploring the complex and ambiguous nature of life in organizations.