Imagined Corporate Communities: Historical Sources and Discourses

Heller, Michaël; Rowlinson, Michael

doi:10.1111/1467-8551.12349

Cited by 18 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Hobsbawm and Ranger’s well-known edited volume brought together examples that demonstrated, across historical periods and countries, how seemingly ancient traditions were invented for the purpose of legitimation, and subsequently became taken for granted. These concepts are influential in public history and collective memory studies, but there are few studies in organizational settings, with the exception of occasional corporate culture and identity studies (Heller and Rowlinson, 2019; Suddaby et al., 2010).…”

Section: Ways Of Making Sense Of the Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2020

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The historic turn in organization studies has led to greater appreciation of the potential contribution from historical research. However, there is increasing emphasis on integrating history into organization studies, rather than on recognizing how accommodating history might require a reorientation. As a result, key conceptual and methodological insights from historiography have been overlooked or at times misrepresented. We identify four modes of enquiry that highlight distinctions from history about ‘how to conceptualize’ and ‘how to research’ the past. First, historical organization studies research the past primarily through reference to archival sources. Second, retrospective organizational history reconstructs the past principally from retrospective accounts, such as those generated in oral history. Third, retrospective organizational memory uses ethnography and interviews to explore the role of memory in the present. Fourth, historical organizational memory traces the institutionalization of organizational memory through archival research. From the analysis, we argue that historical organization studies are increasingly established, and interest in ‘uses of the past’ has contributed to the rise of retrospective organizational memory. However, historiographical reflexivity – a new concept for organization studies – focuses attention on engaging with both history and collective memory, and on the distinct methodological choices between archival and retrospective methods.

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Section: Ways Of Making Sense Of the Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2020

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“…The normalisation of MBH teaching should, therefore, be paralleled by the continuation of “dual integrity” type publication strategies by management historians where it is possible to use archival methods to refine theory. Papers that have achieved this in an applied way include Maclean et al (2018) work on the institutional formation of the global hotel industry, Perchard and MacKenzie (2020) on path dependency in government-business relations and Heller and Rowlinson’s (2019) work on the formation of imagined communities in organisations. All of these papers demonstrate a theoretical contribution, which emerges from a rigorous engagement with historical evidence.…”

Section: Looking Ahead: An Agenda For the 2020smentioning

confidence: 99%

Management and business history – a reflexive research agenda for the 2020s

Tennent

2020

JMH

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect back over his career as a management and business historian so far as to consider opportunities for the future of management and business history as a disciplinary area. Design/methodology/approach The paper consists of two segments – the first half is an auto-ethnographic personal reflection looking at the author’s research journey and how the discipline as experienced by the author has evolved over that time. The second half is a prescriptive look forward to consider how we should leverage the strengths as historians to progress the discipline forward. Findings The paper demonstrates opportunities for management and business history to encompass new agendas including the expansion of the topic into teaching, the possibility for the advancement of empirical contributions and opportunities for findings in new research areas, including the global south and public and project management history. Originality/value The paper demonstrates that historians should be more confident in the disciplinary capabilities, particularly their understandings of historic context, continuity, change and chronologies when making empirical and theoretical contributions.

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“…"Reading" the past and writing about it as eventful allows organizations and historians to articulate how important past events with their afterlives are remembered, forgotten, used or revised in organizations to serve their interests. Moreover, this way of reading the past may reveal how organizational members invent new organizational traditions by imagining their collectivity in novel ways, even when they are haunted by their past (Heller and Rowlinson, 2019). By uncovering how an organization's past is known or reinvented in the present, historical researchers explain what accounts of the past are selected by organizational leaders and members as relevant for the organization's future as well as how these accounts are reconfigured and remembered in the present.…”

Section: Integrating Mnemohistorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking an eventful historic turn down the cultural memory lane

Deal

Novičević

Mills

et al. 2020

JMH

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Purpose This paper aims to find common ground between the supposed incompatible meta-historical positioning of positivism and post-positivism through a turn to mnemohistory in management and organizational history. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the idea of creative synthesis and positioning theory, the authors interject concepts from cultural memory studies in historical research on business and organizations to encourage management historians and organization theorists interested in joining the dialogue around how the past is known in the present. Using notions of “aftermath” and “events,” the idea of apositivism is written into historical organization studies to focus on understanding the complex ways of how past events translate into history. The critical historic turn event is raised as an exemplar of these ideas. Findings The overview of the emergence of the controversial historic turn in management and organization studies and the positioning of its adherents and antagonists revealed that there may be some commonality between the fragmented sense of the field. It was revealed that effective history vis-à-vis mnemohistory may hold the potential of a shared scholarly ethic. Originality/value The research builds on recent work that has sought to bring together the boundaries of management and organizational history. This paper explains how mnemohistory can offer a common position that is instrumental for theorizing the relationships among the past-infused constructs such as organizational heritage, legacy and identity.

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Imagined Corporate Communities: Historical Sources and Discourses

Cited by 18 publications

References 87 publications

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

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

Management and business history – a reflexive research agenda for the 2020s

Taking an eventful historic turn down the cultural memory lane

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