Driving down memory lane: The influence of memories in a community following organizational demise

Abstract

In this paper, we explain how defunct organizations influence the communities they leave behind through ongoing processes of communal memory work, a twofold social process through which members of collectives develop shared memories of a defunct organization and behaviorally engage with its mnemonic traces. We explore how individuals’ shared construal of their environment shapes their emotional orientation towards their past, which in turn gives rise to particular forms of memory work. We further show how communal memory work influences changes in an organization’s role in a community’s identity and members’ construal of their environment. We develop our theory through an analysis of a case study of South Bend, Indiana, in the 54 years following the closure of the Studebaker Corporation’s automotive factory in 1963. We close by discussing the implications of this work for memory scholarship.

Rethinking history and memory in organization studies: The case for historiographical reflexivity

“…Since the 1980s, Nora (1989) and others (Hartog, 2003;Koselleck, 1985) have highlighted the experience of time and expectations of change in the 'longue dur ee', albeit this representing trends of which individuals are rarely cognizant (Mutch, 2016(Mutch, : 1184. The appeal of nostalgia, for example, waxes and wanes over time (Davis, 1979;Do et al, 2019;Fischer, 1980;Strangleman, 1999;Walsh and Glynn, 2008), as does that of a founding figure whose proclamations need regular reinterpretation to remain relevant (Basque and Langley, 2018).…”

Organizational Memory Studies

“…Nevertheless, for OMS to continue to develop, we argue that there is a need to further refine and clarify the constructs that are used to specifically discuss memory in and around organizations. For example, work can still be done to refine constructs such as mnemonic communities (Foroughi & Al-Amoudi, 2020), mnemonic traces (Do et al, 2019), memory work (Mena & Rintamäki, 2020), and social memory assets (Foster et al, 2011) and what their roles in memory processes are, building for instance on the broad categorization between textual, material and oral forms outlined by Schultz & Hernes (2013).…”

“…For instance, Ybema’s (2014) ethnographic study in a Dutch publishing company describes how different versions of the past put forward by different parties converged at times and collided at others to fit their rhetorical arguments in support of, or in opposition to, proposed organizational changes. Elsewhere, Do, Lyle and Walsh (2019) discuss the processes of communal memory work surrounding a defunct manufacturing organization in South Bend, Indiana. The closure of the organization left thousands of its employees jobless and evoked strong feelings among the South Bend residents.…”

“…The closure of the organization left thousands of its employees jobless and evoked strong feelings among the South Bend residents. Do and colleagues (2019) show how changes in residents’ feelings over 50 years were reflected in an amalgam of emotive memories, ranging from nostophobia – a desire to escape the past – to nostalgia – a yearning for a bygone past. They show that such emotive memories were ‘negotiated’ over time (Sturken, 1997) through communal memory work.…”

Organizational memorialization: spatial history and legitimation as chiasms

“…Any organization, over time, experiences an accumulation of stories and artefacts that can be memorialized (Cole, 2013). Organizational memory is an on-going process (Do et al, 2019;Ravasi et al, 2019), making some things visible while others are, purposely or not, occluded (Anteby and Molnaŕ, 2012). Similarly, organizational spaces accumulate legacies that have material and symbolic dimensions, whose value and meaning change over time.…”