Making History Happen: A Genealogical Analysis of Colt’s Rhetorical History

Poor, Stephen; Novičević, Milorad M.; Popoola, Ifeoluwa Tobi; Humphreys, John H.

doi:10.5465/ambpp.2015.11978abstract

Cited by 7 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…Historical narratives have to be convincing, i.e. coherent and consistent (Mordhorst, 2014, p. 119), and need to make sense in shared ‘webs of beliefs’ (Poor, Novicevic, Humphreys, & Popoola, 2016, p. 149). To achieve this, new narratives are placed against the background of existing narratives and conventions, which they set out to support, extend or overturn.…”

Section: The Role Of Context In Uses-of-the-pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

From ‘History as Told’ to ‘History as Experienced’: Contextualizing the Uses of the Past

Lubinski

2018

Organization Studies

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Research has made great strides in understanding how and why organizational actors use the past. So far, scholars have largely focused the level of analysis on the organization, without exploring the intertwined nature of historical claim-making with the organizational field or society at large. This article extends the status quo by conceptualizing the role of context for organizational uses-of-the-past. It identifies three key aspects of context that shape how history contributes to the social construction of reality: the existence of multiple audiences, the landscape of pre-existing historical narratives and the experience of social practices giving credibility to historical claims. By analysing the historical case of German business in colonial India, the paper makes three broader claims that could move research toward a more contextualized conception of the uses-of-the-past: (i) historical claims are validated in a continuous dialogue with multiple audiences; (ii) they revise previously existing narratives by critiquing or ‘outpasting’, i.e. invoking earlier origins; (iii) they often result in ‘rhetorical frictions’ that require continuous and skilful history revisions to mitigate emerging conflicts in their reception. By contextualizing the uses-of-the-past in this way, the paper moves beyond ‘hypermuscular’ organizational actors bending history to their will and foregrounds the situated nature of historical rhetoric.

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Section: The Role Of Context In Uses-of-the-pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

From ‘History as Told’ to ‘History as Experienced’: Contextualizing the Uses of the Past

Lubinski

2018

Organization Studies

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“…The first is that the construction and use of a rhetorical history is an agentic process undertaken by organizational leaders. In their study of Colt, the firearms manufacturer, Poor, Novicevic, Humphreys and Popoola posit ‘a proactive role [for] actors in the interpretation of documentary sources and the reconstruction of the related narratives’, describing how this ‘agentic orientation of organizational history may involve symbolic packaging of the organization’s past’ (Poor et al, 2016, pp. 147–8).…”

Section: Rhetorical Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…147–8). They identify ‘intentional managerial actions’ as central to use of rhetorical history (2016, p. 149).…”

Section: Rhetorical Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The rhetorical history concept is important not only because it breaks with objectivist views of history but also because it can be operationalized. The genealogy of an organization’s historical claims can be unearthed and linked to the pattern of its development, as has been done in a number of cases (Cailluet et al, 2018; Foster et al, 2011; Poor et al, 2016).…”

Section: Rhetorical Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Foster et al claim that to ‘understand how mangers can skillfully appropriate external histories and traditions we draw on social memory studies, which focuses on the creation, impact, and contestation of social memories’ (Foster et al, 2011, p. 104, emphasis added). Poor et al (2016) state that ‘the credibility of some historical narratives that Colt had been successfully communicating to fuse rhetorically the story of its identity with (re)constructed stories of American myths is no longer endorsed unconditionally by some of its stakeholders’ (Poor et al, 2016, p. 151). It is difficult, even for the most skilful leaders, to permanently stabilize the meaning and effectiveness of a rhetorical history, partly because ownership of it has to be shared and partly because the societal context in which it is received and interpreted can change.…”

Section: Rhetorical Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Power, Archives and the Making of Rhetorical Organizational Histories: A stakeholder perspective

Popp

Fellman

2019

Organization Studies

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We contribute to the rhetorical history concept by focusing on the corporate archive, a key source for constructing rhetorical histories. We propose a stakeholder perspective as a way to model the constellation of power and interests around the corporate archive, identifying four key stakeholder groups: owners; archivists; historians; and audiences. Recent work has problematized the rhetorical history concept, arguing that rhetorical histories are more unstable and harder to control by managers than suggested by earlier work. This paper contributes by exploring the corporate archive as a source of contestation shaped by the varying degrees of power and interest held by key stakeholders. We propose a simple stakeholder perspective on the corporate archive before applying it to four case studies. Application allows us to refine this approach by revealing the interplay of forces around the corporate archive in relation to the construction of rhetorical history.

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The narrative cleansing of Andrew Carnegie: entrepreneurial generativity as identity capital

Humphreys

Hayek

Novičević

et al. 2019

JMH

Self Cite

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to proffer a reconstructed theoretic model of entrepreneurial generatively that accounts for personal and social identities in the narrative construction of entrepreneurial identity.. Design/methodology/approach The authors followed general analytically structured history processes using the life of Andrew Carnegie to understand how generativity scripts aid in aligning personal and social identities in the formation of entrepreneurial identity. Findings The authors argue that Carnegie used entrepreneurial generativity as a form of redemptive identity capital during the narrative reconstruction of his entrepreneurial identity. Originality/value This paper extends Harvey et al.’s (2011) model of entrepreneurial philanthropy motivation by including forms of self-capital (psychological capital and self-identity capital) as part of the co-construction of entrepreneurial identity and proposing a reconstructed capital theoretic model of entrepreneurial generativity.

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Making History Happen: A Genealogical Analysis of Colt’s Rhetorical History

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

From ‘History as Told’ to ‘History as Experienced’: Contextualizing the Uses of the Past

From ‘History as Told’ to ‘History as Experienced’: Contextualizing the Uses of the Past

Power, Archives and the Making of Rhetorical Organizational Histories: A stakeholder perspective

The narrative cleansing of Andrew Carnegie: entrepreneurial generativity as identity capital

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