It’s typical of me that only today did I become aware that our article on “Rethinking History and Memory in Organization Studies” (with John Hassard & Mick Rowlinson) has been the Article of the Month in Human Relations for March. Still, very pleased that the journal has highlighted our piece, especially since Human Relations has a great track record for publishing innovative pieces at the intersection of organization research and history.
Call for Papers for a Special Issue
Submission Deadline: 30 November 2022
Guest Editors
JMS Editor
There is an intrinsic and enduring connection between occupations and memory. In the age before printing, mnemotechnics, or the “art of memory”, was a critical criterion of elite occupations in ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman societies (Yates, 1966). The medieval guilds and craft apprenticeships, similarly, adapted techniques of memory handed down from the ancients as a discipline for training experts in religion, art, literature, and architecture (Kieser, 1989). Modernity and the expansion of bureaucracy have changed our relationship to the past (Koselleck, 1985). The development of a bureaucratic culture grounded on written records and the rise of historical memory has led to the development of new occupations and the reconfiguration of social remembering into ‘culturally institutionalized heritage’ (Assmann, 1995). As a result, the role of experts and institutions in preserving, organizing, and curating the past has changed profoundly in the modern era (Levine, 1986). The change is perhaps most pronounced for those experts charged with managing social and organizational memories in support of national policies (Anderson, 1983). More recently, the advent of analog and digital technologies for recording the past and the mediatization of society has introduced yet more changes to our relationship to the past and a new host of experts and practices of remembering and forgetting (Garde-Hansen, 2011). As this brief exploration suggests, expert work is both the outcome of and the source of collective memory work. In spite of the relevance of this recursive relationship, the intersection between occupations and memory is still under-studied and not well understood within management and organization studies.
Research on Occupations and Professions in Organizations (OPO) is a vivid area of scholarly activity that encompasses the study of professions, occupations, careers, and expert work (Anteby, Chan, & DiBenigno, 2016). In addition to more traditional functionalist and conflict-based approaches, organization scholars have recently developed an institutional approach that focuses on the parallel processes of professionalization and institutionalization (Muzio, Brock, & Suddaby, 2013; Suddaby & Viale, 2011). One of the advantages of studying occupations in connection to institutions is that it allows us to understand how they coevolve over time. This is relevant because “professional institutions are often unintelligible without reference to their historical development” (Burrage, 1990, p.18). However, the literature on OPO has not yet seriously grappled with the mnemonic component implicit in that formulation. In particular, OPO research has been little affected by the increasing attention to history and memory in organization studies (Clark & Rowlinson, 2004; Foroughi, Coraiola, Rintamäki, Mena, & Foster, 2020). Although historical research on professions and occupations has been on the rise (Burrage & Torstendahl, 1990), the focus has been on using historical methods to produce ‘history to theory’ (Kipping & Üsdiken, 2014). OPO scholars have generally ignored incorporation of memory, time, and history in theory. A better understanding of the role of the past and the place of memory in the development of expert work may contribute to the development of OPO theorizing.
The rise of Organizational Memory Studies (OMS) is associated with a renewed interest in memory in management and organization studies fostered by a realization that the past is not a given but is instead a social construction (Rowlinson, Booth, Clark, Delahaye, & Procter, 2010; Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010). The past can be used to achieve organizational goals and generate competitive advantage (Foster, Coraiola, Suddaby, Kroezen, & Chandler, 2017; Maclean, Harvey, Sillince, & Golant, 2014; Suddaby, Coraiola, Harvey, & Foster, 2020). Indeed, empirical research has been largely based on single case studies and focused on the way top managers strategically use the past (e.g., Anteby & Molnár, 2012; Maclean, Harvey, Sillince, & Golant, 2018; Schultz & Hernes, 2013; Sinha, Jaskiewicz, Gibb, & Combs, 2020). This has limited the focus of studies to an organizational level of analysis, obscuring the connection between organizational memory and social institutions (Coraiola, Suddaby, & Foster, 2018; Ocasio, Mauskapf, & Steele, 2016). It has also attributed much agency to managers in shaping understandings of the past, with limited attention to other communities and occupations engaged in memory work (e.g., Cailluet, Gorge, & Özçağlar-Toulouse, 2018; Foroughi, 2020; Foster, Wiebe, Coraiola, Bastien, & Suddaby, 2021; Mena, Rintamäki, Fleming, & Spicer, 2016). There has been little work on how state institutions may seek to prevent remembering by marginalized communities (Maclean, Harvey, & Stringfellow, 2017). In other words, the micro and macro aspects of collective memory work are still poorly understood. More research is then needed to uncover how social institutions of memory impact organization and how the remembering and forgetting take place through the efforts of experts in organizational roles and outside of organizational boundaries.
The goal of this proposal is to foster the mutual development of the research on OPO (Anteby et al., 2016; Muzio et al., 2013) and OMS (Foroughi et al., 2020; Rowlinson et al., 2010). OMS is concerned with processes of remembering, forgetting, and representing the past in and around organizations (Coraiola, Barros, Maclean, & Foster, 2021). OPO studies the creation and legitimation of expert knowledge, the emergence of occupational communities, and the formation of boundaries and jurisdictions around professions (Abbott, 1988). So far, there has been limited cross-fertilization between these two research areas. Given the relevance of memory to the work of experts and the fundamental role experts play developing collective memory work, we call for more research on the intersection of the literature on OPO and OMS.
OMS scholars have focused on how the past can be reinterpreted and leveraged to achieve corporate goals (Suddaby et al., 2010; Wadhwani, Suddaby, Mordhorst, & Popp, 2018). They have paid less attention to the people doing memory work. Empirical research has focused on leaders and top managers, leaving other actors such as rank-and-file employees (e.g., Aeon & Lamertz, 2021; Foroughi & Al-Amoudi, 2020), the media (e.g., Cailluet et al., 2018), partner professional organizations (e.g., Coraiola & Derry, 2020) and other stakeholders such as NGOs (e.g., Mena et al., 2016) under-researched. Yet, many organizations hire professionals of memory such as archivists to manage their pasts (Foster et al., 2021; Lasewicz, 2015), often in dedicated archives and museums to preserve the memory of the company (Maclean et al., 2014; Nissley & Casey, 2002; Ravasi, Rindova, & Stigliani, 2019). Indeed, many organizations have realized that the past constitute social memory assets (Foster, Suddaby, Minkus, & Wiebe, 2011) that can be explored for marketing, advertising, and public relations (Illia & Zamparini, 2016; Misiura, 2006; Urde, Greyser, & Balmer, 2007). Apart from the memory work organizations do themselves, there are several professionals organizations that provide mnemonic services for a multiplicity of organizations such as The History Factory in the US (e.g., Weindruch, 2016), Grifo in Brazil, and the Centre for Business History in Sweden. The field of cultural memory and heritage has touched on content writers, tour guides, historical reenactors, museum curators, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, and influencers, but they still remain under-studied. With its focus on expert knowledge, the research on OPO can enrich our understanding of processes of remembering, forgetting, and representing the past taking place in and around organizations, and in particular the role of institutions and occupations therein.
Similarly, memory and history are assumed in OPO theories but hardly unpacked (Suddaby, Foster, & Mills, 2014). Although there has been growing historical research on occupations and professions (Burrage & Torstendahl, 1990), the past has been used as a field for testing OPO theories instead of a construct within OPO theorizing. Prior studies have focused on the emergence and diffusion of occupational categories (Baron, Dobbin, & Jennings, 1986; Dobbin, 1994), the transmission of professional norms and culture (Becker, Geer, Hughes, & Strauss, 1961; Orr, 1996), the historical gendering of professions (Arndt & Bigelow, 2005; Davies, 1996), and how professionals change and maintain institutions (Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002; Wright, Zammuto, & Liesch, 2017). These studies use constructs such as professionalization and institutionalization that assume that a community with claims about a body of knowledge becomes progressively accepted and endures over time (Abbott, 1988; Suddaby & Viale, 2011). In addition, institutional approaches to OPO use a variety of historical metaphors such as ‘sedimentation’ (Cooper, Hinings, Greenwood, & Brown, 1996), ‘layering’ (Thelen, 2004), and ‘legacies’ (Schneiberg, 2007) to capture the cumulation of remnants from the past and their translation across time and space (Daudigeos, 2013; Goodrick & Reay, 2011; Kipping & Kirkpatrick, 2013). OPO research also focuses on processes of categorization, socialization, and legitimation (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Douglas, 1986), which presume the transmission of institutional contents and practices across generations of occupational members and the influence of past actions and decisions upon the present. OMS research can make explicit these assumptions about the past and help conceptualize the role of history and memory in OPO research (Kipping & Üsdiken, 2014).
This special issue builds on some disparate initial efforts connecting the two literatures. For example, Quattrone (2009) shows how the success of accounting was attached to the ancient practice of the art of memory. Suddaby & Greenwood (2005) report how history was used as a symbolic resource to gather legitimacy by a big accounting firm. Foster et al (2021) develop a model of memory work of corporate historians and archivists in Fortune 500 companies. Coraiola and Derry (2020) describe the central role played by lawyers and law firms in sustaining the strategy of social forgetting undertaken by US Big Tobacco. Blagoev, Felten, Kahn (2018) analyze how curators and catalogers constructed new affordances for technologies of memory within the British Museum. Nilsson & Blume (2021) reflect on the historical influence of gendering in the professionalization of textile conservators in Sweden. Crawford, Coraiola, & Dacin (In press) theorize how the memory work of boat guides contributed to preserve the Grand Canyon. Schultz & Hernes (2013) and Hatch and Schultz (2017) study the changes induced by external consultants’ revisiting of the organizational collective memory in Lego and Carlsberg. And Mena and Rintamäki (2020) together with Stutz and Schrempf-Stirling (2020) discuss the responsibility of managers and corporate archivists in reconstructing the past of the organization in relation to corporate social responsibility.
We encourage contributions focused on, but not limited to, the following four themes:
1. Institutions of memory and the institutionalization of mnemonic practices: Institutions ‘direct and control’ (Douglas, 1986) the memory of a community. At the same time, social institutions are influenced by collective memory (Ocasio et al., 2016). Modernity fostered the emergence of new areas of expertise about the past encapsulated in ‘institutions of memory’, i.e. schools, archives, libraries, museums (Anderson, 1983). Recently, several other organizations have been influencing the way we define, engage with, and understand the past (e.g., Ancestry, Facebook, me too, Black Lives Matter). These developments raise several questions such as: How expertise about the past has changed with the rise of new technologies? How do new forms of expertise and organization shape the way we see the past? How do they impact on the memory work of organizations and their narratives about the past? How do experts inside and outside organizations contribute to the remembering, forgetting, and representing the past? What is the role of the media and social media in shaping our understanding of the past? How do social movements change the texture of the past?
2. Professional projects, collective identities and institutional work: Experts engage in collective projects to achieve legitimacy and establish jurisdictions. The past can be a source of symbolic resources for the development of professional projects and institutional work. The past can also be an arena in which different occupations compete to legitimate their knowledge. Within an organizational field, professional organizations and experts alike may find in the past a source for constructing a distinctive identity and innovate in the creation of new categories. Some related questions include: What role does memory play in collective action? How is memory work and institutional work related? What is the role of tradition in expert practice? How do professions and organizations rework the past for institutional change and maintenance? How are past rituals, ceremonies and attire used for the construction professional identities? How our changing relationship with the past contributes to the emergence of new occupations (e.g., fact checker, genealogist, living historian) and the revitalization of old crafts (e.g., brewmaster, tailor, leatherworker)?
3. Professionals in organizations and professional organizations: Memory work can be internalized or outsourced. The challenges memory experts face, the way they behave and use their expert judgement, and the practices they engage into may vary depending on the autonomy given to expert workers and the form of governance in which they are organized. The state has been the traditional home for memory experts. However, the recognition of the past as a source of competitive advantage has led many business organizations to create corporate archives and history departments, and to develop other projects based on the past. In addition, growing demand has fostered the emergence of a heritage industry with several professional organizations dedicated to managing the past. Some possible questions in this theme include: What role do archivists and historians play in organizations? How do they use their expert judgement? How have these new organizational occupations developed? How does internal and external memory work differ? How do professional organizations develop memory work? How do heritage experts and organizations rework and represent the past? How has the cultural heritage industry coevolved with heritage experts?
4. Politics of remembering, professional responsibility and ethics: Memory is power-laden. Social groups and organizations often compete in their interpretations of the past. In addition, every act of remembering, forgetting, and representing the past involves a powerful moral and normative component. The way we remember the past sets the tone for what we do in the present and how it should be remembered for the future. The past can be either a source of pride or shame. Expert knowledge is used to remember and forget the good and the bad in different communities of memory. In this sense, there are important implications connecting the work of experts with issues of social and historical responsibility and ethics. Questions related to this theme would include: What are the ethical standards binding the work of memory experts? How do they manage the ethical dilemmas of managing the past? How are memory and professional misconduct related? How do experts deal with the dark past of organizations? What is the role of experts in processes of historical (in)justice?
The authors asked to revise and resubmit (R&R) their papers will also be invited to a manuscript development workshop (to be held in the first half of 2023; location and other details to be announced at a later date). During the workshop they will have the opportunity to present and discuss their papers with other attendees and the guest editors. Please note that participation in the workshop does not guarantee acceptance of the paper in the Special Issue. Likewise, attendance is also not a prerequisite for paper acceptance.
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There are still some spots available for the paper development workshop roundtables on Organizational Mnemonics at AOM Aug 9 2019 10:15AM – 12:15PM
If you have an extended abstract (up to 750-words) that you would like to receive feedback from some leading researchers in the field, please let us know asap so we can include your submission in one of the roundtables.
The details of the PDW are as follows.
Organizational Mnemonics: The ‘Historical Turn’ and the Research on Learning, Memory, and Ignorance
| DATE & TIME Friday, Aug 9 2019 10:15AM – 12:15PM | LOCATION Boston Marriott Copley Place, Grand Ballroom Salon CD |
Organizers
Panelists
Discussant
Aims and Scope
The goal of this PDW is twofold. First, we want to bring together scholars from the three main traditions of thought within the field of organizational mnemonics. We use the concept of mnemonics as a reference to a broader field of inquiry than what is usually included within the research on organizational learning and knowledge management. We argue that the field organizational mnemonics focuses on theorizing about the past as an integral part of organizational life. In addition to the research on organizational learning and knowledge, we include as part of the field the communities interested in the study of collective memory and the uses of the past in organizations, as well as the research on ignorance, stupidity, forgetting-work, and ANTi-history.
So far, however, these communities have been as separate epistemic communities and have rarely engaged directly with one another. This PDW will provide an important forum to display the range of approaches that constitute the field of organizational mnemonics and presenting some of the multiple possibilities of research within and between approaches.
Format of the PDW
The PDW will comprise two parts:
In the first part, a group of seasoned researchers will share their experience working in the field and present a view about the future of the research on organizational mnemonics. Pre-registration for the first part will not be required.
The second part will focus on providing feedback and career advice to PhD students and Early Career scholars. Participation in the second part of the PDW will require the pre-submission of an extended abstract (750 words). The participants will be assigned to roundtables with the panelists and other participants. They will all read each other abstracts in advance and will receive feedback from one another as well as from the panelists during the roundtables.
PDW Submission Requirements
Scholars interested in participating in the second part of the PDW and get feedback on their research should submit an extended abstract (up to 750-words) to be read in advance by members of the roundtable.
Please direct all inquiries regarding the PDW to Diego Coraiola coraiola@ualberta.ca or Majo Murcia mmurcia@iae.edu.ar.
Years ago, my parents decided to build a summerhouse in the garden and consulted a neighbour who had once been the property’s housekeeper. The octogenarian sucked her remaining teeth. “Mark my words: it will blow down. The last one did,” she said. “It stood for 50 years — but it blew down.”
This is the problem with tapping institutional memory. Some of your colleagues are the only people who know about the organisation’s strategic errors and successes. But like all autobiography, their recollections may be partial, and their instincts may tend to preservation rather than progress.
I was reminded of the summerhouse (still standing, by the way), when I read last week’s interview with Konica Minolta’s chief executive. Shoei Yamana found section heads, known as “bucho”, resisted his reforms. Their attachment to the status quo was founded on the group’s historical victories, but, as Mr Yamana put it, “We cannot live with past success”.
Sweep away this layer of middle management, as new brooms are wont to do, and you will quickly hear the complaint that the organisation is losing institutional memory. This is invariably self-interested. Still, a little like taking a mallet to a retaining wall, it is best to understand what you are removing before you tear it out. Otherwise, you will find yourself in the position of those new chief executives who axe a group of old hands only to have to rehire them as “consultants” because they were the only people who knew how to fix an old piece of kit, read a defunct computer language, or even (in the case of the worldwide pilot shortage) fly a plane.
For the whole article, see the FT .
We are inviting you to submit your extended abstract to the 10th International Process Symposium Theme: About Time: Temporality and History in Organization Studies
20-23 June 2018, Porto Carras Grand Resort, Halkidiki, Greece
Professional Development Workshop: 20/6/2018
General process-oriented and theme-focused papers are invited
Abstract Submission is now open at:
http://www.process-symposium.com/abstractsubmitform/abstractsubmitform.html
Deadline: 31 January 2018
The conference will take place between 20-23 June 2018, Porto Carras Grand Resort, Halkidiki, Greece (http://www.portocarras.com/)
Conveners:
Juliane Reinecke, King’s Business School, King’s College London, UK
Roy Suddaby, University of Victoria, Canada & Newcastle University, UK
Ann Langley, HEC Montreal, Canada
Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus, Cyprus & University of Warwick, UK
Keynote Speakers:
William Blattner, Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University, USA, author of Heidegger’s “Being and Time”
Tor Hernes, Professor of Organization Theory, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, author of A Process Theory of Organization
Eviatar Zerubavel, Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University, USA, author of Time Maps: Collective memory and the Social Shape of the Past
Pre-Symposium Workshop Panels (20/6/2018)
Pre-Symposium Workshop Panels (20/6/2018)
Taking time seriously in organizational research: Theoretical and methodological challenges
Tima Bansal, Ivey Business School, Canada
Paula Jarzabkowski, Cass Business School, UK
Majken Schultz, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
History matters: The value and challenges of historical approaches to organizational and management research
Matthias Kipping, Schulich School of Business, Canada
Michael Rowlinson, University of Exeter Business School, UK
Dan Wadhwani, University of the Pacific, USA
Call for Papers
Tenth International Symposium on
Process Organization Studies
Theme:
About Time: Temporality and History in Organization Studies
General process-oriented and theme-focused papers are invited
20-23 June 2018
Professional Development Workshop: 20/6/2018
Conveners:
Juliane Reinecke, Warwick Business School, UK (Juliane.Reinecke@wbs.ac.uk)
Roy Suddaby, University of Victoria, Canada & Newcastle University, UK (rsuddaby@uvic.ca)
Ann Langley, HEC Montreal, Canada (ann.langley@hec.ca)
Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus, Cyprus & University of Warwick, UK (process.symposium@gmail.com)
Keynote Speakers:
William Blattner, Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University, USA, author of Heidegger’s “Being and Time”
Tor Hernes, Professor of Organization Theory, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, author of A Process Theory of Organization
Eviatar Zerubavel, Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University, USA, author of Time Maps: Collective memory and the Social Shape of the Past
Rationale: What is Process Organization Studies?
Process Organization Studies (PROS) is a way of studying organizations that is grounded on process metaphysics – the worldview that sees processes, rather than substances, as the basic forms of the universe. A process view: rests on a relational ontology, a performative epistemology, and a dynamic praxeology; focuses on becoming, change, and flux, and pays particular attention to forms of agency; prioritizes process over outcome, activity over product, change over persistence, novelty over stasis, open-endedness over determination; invites us to acknowledge, rather than reduce, the complexity of the world and, in that sense, it is animated by what philosopher Stephen Toulmin called an “ecological style” of thinking.
Purpose, Venue, and Organization
The aim of the Symposium is to consolidate, integrate, and further develop ongoing efforts to advance a sophisticated process perspective in organization and management studies.
PROS is an annual event, organized in conjunction with the publication of the annual series Perspectives on Process Organization Studies (published by Oxford University Press), and it takes place in a Greek island or resort, in June every year. Details of all hitherto Symposia, including topics, conveners and keynote speakers, can be seen at www.process-symposium.com.
Around 100 papers are usually accepted, following a review of submitted abstracts by the conveners. PROS is renowned for offering participants the opportunity to interact in depth, exchange constructive comments, and share insights in a stimulating, relaxing, and scenic environment.
The Tenth Symposium will take place on 20-23 June 2018, at the Porto Carras Grand Resort, Halkidiki, Greece (http://www.portocarras.com/). The first day of the Symposium (20 June) will consist of the Professional Development Workshop. The Symposium venue, comfortable, relaxing, and situated in one of the most beautiful beachfront locations in rural Greece, in the feet of a mountain of pine trees, accessible by bus or taxi by Thessaloniki Airport, will provide an ideal setting for participants to relax and engage in creative dialogues.
As is customary by now, the Symposium is organized in two tracks – a General Track and a Thematic Track. Each track is described below.
More specifically, although not necessarily consolidated under a process metaphysical label, several strands in organization and management studies have adopted a more or less process-oriented perspective over the years. Karl Weick’s persistent emphasis on organizing and the important role of sensemaking in it is, perhaps, the best-known process approach in the field. Early management and organizational research by Henry Mintzberg, Andrew Pettigrew and Andrew Van de Ven was also conducted from an explicitly process perspective. More recently, scholars such as Martha Feldman, Wanda Orlikowski, Robert Chia, Tor Hernes, and several others, have shown a sophisticated awareness of the importance of process-related issues in their research. Current studies that take an explicitly performative (or enactivist/relational/practice-based) view of organizations have similarly adopted, in varying degrees, a process vocabulary and have further refined a process sensibility. Indeed, the growing use of the gerund (-ing) indicates the desire to move towards dynamic ways of understanding organizational phenomena, especially in a fast-moving, inter-connected, globalized world.
Since a process worldview is not a doctrine but an orientation, it can be developed in several different directions, exploring a variety of topics in organizational research. For example, traditional topics such as organizational design, routines, leadership, trust, coordination, change, innovation, learning and knowledge, accountability, communication, authority, materiality and technology, etc., which have often been studied as “substances”, from a process perspective can be approached as performative accomplishments – as situated sequences of activities and complexes of processes unfolding in time. A process view treats organizational phenomena not as faits accomplish, but as (re)created through interacting embodied agents embedded in sociomaterial practices, whose actions are mediated by institutional, linguistic and material artifacts.
Papers exploring any organizational research topic with a process orientation are invited for submission to the General Track.
For 2018 the theme is:
About Time: Temporality and History in Organization Studies
A description of this theme and its importance follows.
Process studies of organizations focus attention on how and why organizational actions and structures emerge, develop, grow or terminate over time (Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas & Van de Ven, 2013). Time, timing, and temporality, therefore, are inherently important to organizational process studies as “[no] concept of motion is possible without the category of time” (Sorokin & Merton, 1937: 615). Yet time remains an under-theorized construct in organization studies that has struggled to move much beyond chronological conceptions of “clock” time (Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence & Tushman, 2001; Clark, 1990).
Missing from this linear view of time are ongoing debates about objectivity versus subjectivity in the experience of time (Butler, 1995), linear versus alternative structures of time (Dawson & Sikes, 2016) or an appreciation of collective or culturally determined inferences of temporality (Zerubavel, 1981; Cunliffe, Luhman & Boje, 2004). This is critical because our understanding of time and temporality can shape how we view and relate to organizational phenomena – as unfolding processes or stable objects (Reinecke & Ansari, 2017). But we are only beginning to appreciate the role of temporality in organizational processes – i.e. how the materials of the present are used to impose meaning and understanding on both past experience and possible futures (Schultz & Hernes, 2013; Hernes, 2008; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). As the noted German sociologist Norbert Elias (1993) observed, echoing St. Augustine, while we all experience time and have an intuitive sense of its passing, the concept of time so eludes precise articulation that it has attained the status of the “ultimate puzzle” in social theory.
History is an equally important but under-theorized concept in organization studies. While we have an intuitive sense of history as a process, organizational theorists have struggled to move beyond two limited conceptualizations of historical processes. One approach is to see history as a constraint on organization’s capacity for change. History, thus, limits agency through “path dependence” (North, 1990), “structural inertia” (Hannan & Freeman, 1984) or institutional “entropy” (Oliver, 1992). An alternative view is to see history as a unique source of competitive advantage, either through the conferral of unique resources (Porter, 1998; Barney, 1986), or through the historical conversion of routines into dynamic capabilities (Teece, Pisano & Shuen, 1997; Feldman, 2000). Both approaches suffer from the restrictive view of history as an objective set of “brute facts” that are somehow exterior to the individuals, organizations and collectives that experience them.
Emerging streams of process-oriented research have begun to move beyond viewing the past as a historically fixed object, instead conceptualized the past as being “as hypothetical as the future” (Mead, 1932: 31), or “up for grabs” (Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013). Studies have addressed how actors continually reconstruct their view of the past in light of the emerging present (Bakken, Holt, & Zundel, 2013; Schultz & Hernes, 2013). But much work remains to be done. For instance, there is a distinct absence of understanding the socially constructive link between history and memory (Bluedorn & Denhart, 1988), history and organizational identity (Delahaye, Booth, Clark, Procter & Rowlinson, 2009) and, perhaps more significantly, an oversight of the common generic underpinnings of collective memories (Halbwachs, 1992) and how they constitute “mnemonic communities” (Zerubavel, 2003).
Despite these conceptual tensions, there is clearly a growing interest in time, temporality and history in organizational studies. The turn to process has contributed to this interest (Chia, 2002; Thelen, 2000; Pettigrew, Woodward & Cameron, 2000; Roe, Waller & Clegg, 2009). The historical turn in management has similarly triggered an effort to re-theorize history in organizations in a more nuanced manner (Bucheli & Wadhwani, 2013; Rowlinson, Hassard & Decker, 2013; Kipping & Usdiken, 2014; Mills, Suddaby, Foster & Durepos, 2016; Suddaby & Foster, 2017). Increasingly, management theory is acquiring a “historical consciousness” – an awareness of time, history and memory as critical elements in processes of organizing (Suddaby, 2016).
The aim of this symposium is to draw together these various emerging strands of interest in adopting a more nuanced orientation toward time, temporality and history to better understand the temporal aspects of organizational processes. In this year’s Thematic Track we seek to encourage and enrich our understanding of different ways in which, by adopting a process-oriented view of time, temporality and history, we can reinvigorate established subjects in organization studies.
In particular, we encourage conceptual, empirical and methodological papers that use a process-oriented view of time, temporality and history to enrich our knowledge of topics that include, but need not be limited to:
Organizational identity: What is the role of time, temporality and history in shaping organizational identity? For instance, how do organizational members revise and re-imagine their collective past to re-construct its emergent present identity? (see Anteby & Molnar, 2012; Suddaby & Foster, 2016; Gioia, Schultz & Corley, 2000; Howard-Grenville, Metzger & Meyer, 2013; Lamertz, Foster, Coraiola & Kroezen, 2016; Schultz & Hernes, 2013; Ybema, 2010; Delahaye et al, 2009).
Organizational memory: How are different understandings of time, temporality and history involved in the emergence of organizational memory? How do collective memories emerge and come to constitute history? (see Rowlinson, Booth, Clarke, Delahaye & Proctor, 2010; Walsh & Ungson, 1991).
Strategic Management: What is the role of time, temporality and history in strategic management? How do actors construct collective organizational futures? How do they resolve the intertemporal paradox between present-day exploitation and future-oriented exploration? (see Brunninge, 2009; Foster, Suddaby, Minkus & Weibe, 2011; Hatch & Schultz, 2017; Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013; Suddaby, Foster & Quinn-Trank, 2010).
Organizational Change: How do different, often implicit assumptions about time, temporality and history shape our models and conceptualization of organizational stability and change? How may (re-)constructions of the past, present or future affect actors’ ability to initiative, accelerate or prevent continuity or change? How does change become ‘inevitable’ or ‘irreversible’ over time? (see Dawson, 2014; Dawson & Sikes, 2016; Huy, 2001; Suddaby & Foster, 2017; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002).
Institutional Theory: How do institutions become ‘enduring’? What are the temporal qualities of institutions? What temporal patterns underpin processes of creation, maintenance and disruption of institutions? What is the pace and rhythms of institutionalization and institutional change? How may temporal norms and patterns themselves be socially constructed so as to enable or constrain certain institutional processes? (see Lawrence, Winns, & Jennings, 2001; Suddaby & Foster, 2013, Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; Rowell, Gustafsson & Clemente, 2016.
Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship: How do actors imaginatively generate possible future trajectories of action that underpin entrepreneurial ventures? How is the past and future re-negotiated and re-invented in the present so as to create opportunities for creativity and innovation? How does history and tradition become a resource so as to allow actors to innovate from the past? (see Popp & Holt, 2013; Bátiz-Lazo, Haigh & Stearns, 2015).
Sensemaking: How do conceptions of time enter sensemaking processes? What is the role of temporal sensemaking in engaging with anticipations of the future and memories of the past to reconfigure present relations and structures? How do actors project sense into an uncertain future? (see Gioia, Corley & Fabbri, 2002; Wiebe, 2010).
Sustainability: How do actors reconcile multiple temporal orientations and timescapes, such as balancing the demands of the present with needs in the future, a tension that is at the heart of business sustainability? (see Reinecke & Ansari, 2015; Slawinski & Bansal, 2015).
Routines: How is the performance of routines played out in time? How does history shape the enactment of particular routines? How do particular temporalities implicated in different routines interact, with what results? How does timing affect the unfolding of routinized performances? (see Mutch 2016; Feldman, 2016).
Methodology: What research designs are best to capture time? How can methodologies move beyond chronological conceptions of time to include more experiential types of time? How might process researchers move beyond producing what Weick (1999: 135) labels “artifacts of retrospect” that look backward in time towards “narratives of prospect” that capture the experience of living forward? (see also Fachin and Langley, 2017; Shotter, 2006).
References:
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Anteby, M., & Molnár, V. (2012). Collective memory meets organizational identity: remembering to forget in a firm’s rhetorical history. Academy of Management Journal, 55(3), 515-540.
Bakken, T., Holt, R., & Zundel, M. (2013). Time and Play in Management Practice: An Investigation Through the Philosophies of MctTaggart and Heidegger. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 29, 13–22.
Barney, J. 1991. Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1): 99-120.
Bátiz-Lazo, B., Haigh, T., & Stearns, D. L. 2015. How the Future Shaped the Past: The Case of the Cashless Society. Enterprise & Society, 15(1): 103-131.
Bluedorn, A. C., & Denhardt, R. B. 1988. Time and Organizations. Journal of Management, 14(2): 299-320.
Brunninge, O. 2009. Using history in organizations: How managers make purposeful reference to history in strategy processes. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22 (1): 8-26.
Bucheli, M., & Wadhwani, R. D. (Eds.). (2013). Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods. Oxford University Press.
Butler, R. 1995. Time in Organizations: Its experience, explanation and effects. Organization Studies 16(6): 925-950.
Clark, P. 1990. Chronological codes and organizational analysis, Pp. 137-166 in Hassard, J. & Pym, D (Eds.), The Theory and Philosophy of Organizations: Critical issues and new perspectives. London: Routledge.
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Foster, W. M., Suddaby, R., Minkus, A., & Wiebe, E. 2011. History as social memory assets: The example of Tim Hortons. Management & Organizational History, 6(1), 101-120.
Gioia, D. A., Corley, K. G., and Fabbri, T. (2002). Revising the Past (while Thinking in the Future Perfect Tense). Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15(6): 622– 34.
Gioia, D. A., Schultz, M., & Corley, K. G. (2000). Organizational identity, image, and adaptive instability. Academy of Management Review, 25(1), 63-81.
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Professional Development Workshop (20/6/2018)
Aim
The aim of the PDW is to provide a stimulating and interactive context for researchers to further develop their ideas and projects. More specifically, the PDW is designed to enable participants to: (a) refine their understanding of process thought; (b) share with others some of the methodological and theoretical challenges they have encountered in conducting, theorizing, and teaching process research, or putting process insights to practice in organizations; and (c) elicit/offer suggestions about how researching, theorizing, and teaching process may be further advanced.
The PDW will consist of (a) Workshop papers, (b) Panel Discussions, and (c) Plenary Panels.
Workshop Papers
We invite submissions of extended abstracts from researchers who have papers at an early stage of writing and would like helpful feedback as to how their papers may be further developed and published. Such submissions will be presented and extensively discussed in a roundtable format.
Panel Discussions
We invite submission proposals for panel discussions related to any process-related topic. An ideal submission will aim to: discuss a topic of broad relevance to process research and the challenges it presents; consolidate, update and further advance our knowledge of it; or introduce new topics that process-oriented researchers need to know about.
Panel discussions can focus either on theoretical or methodological topics. Up to four panel discussions will be accepted. Topics related to the conference theme are particularly welcome. Proposals will be evaluated in terms of clarity; novelty, relevance for and attractiveness to the process studies community; and developmental possibilities for its participants. A panel discussion will last for 90 minutes.
Plenary Panels
The following plenary panels will take place:
Tima Bansal, Ivey Business School, Canada
Paula Jarzabkowski, Cass Business School, UK
Majken Schultz, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Matthias Kipping, Schulich School of Business, Canada
Michael Rowlinson, University of Exeter Business School, UK
Dan Wadhwani, University of the Pacific, USA
Submissions
General process-oriented papers, theme-focused papers, as well as PDW workshop papers and panel discussion proposals are invited. Interested participants must submit an extended abstract of about 1000 words for their proposed contribution by January 31st, 2018 through the following link:
http://www.process-symposium.com/abstractsubmitform/abstractsubmitform.html
The submission should contain authors’ names, institutional affiliations, email and postal addresses, and indicate the Track for which the submission is made (General or Thematic), or whether the submission is intended for the PDW. Authors will be notified of acceptance or otherwise by March 7th, 2018. Full papers will be submitted by June 4th, 2018.
Theme
Organizations are known for marking their own centennial, bicentennial and other anniversaries. These celebrations are good opportunities for organizations to reflect on their past. The commissioned corporate history that often stems from these events helps the organization to understand its past. This work can then be used externally to form part of its marketing strategy or internally as a way to firm up its identity (Suddaby, Foster and Quinn Trank 2016). The past and longevity also confers legitimacy upon the organization (Roowaan 2009). Other commemorative dates and remembrance ceremonies are of similar importance. While not the traditional focus of business historians, these dates are nevertheless observed by organizations as they participate in the social process of remembering events. This is especially apparent in the experience of war and, as we have seen more recently, terrorist attacks.
A special Issue of Management and Organizational History will be timed to coincide with 11th November 2018 as the 100th year anniversary of Armistice Day. It will be devoted to the examining the impact that war, as a social and political event, had upon organizational identity. How did organizations understand and rationalize their national, regional, religious or racial identity and behavior in times of conflict? What objects, rituals and ceremonies organizations initiate to remember and commemorate the lives lost in war – if at all? To what extent were memorials or commemorations specific to organisations themselves, albeit embedded within wider systems of meaning? How does the end of conflict and peace time change these gestures or attitudes towards other nations or groups? We welcome empirical and theoretical papers that consider case studies or adopt long run historical analysis as well as encouraging the submission of work that utilizes new approaches to concepts of memory. Papers that examine the influence of World War I would be pertinent contributions to the issue but it is not confined to focusing on this war alone. Submissions that consider other wars or conflicts, such as the Hundred Years War, Wars of Independence, Civil Wars, Napoleonic War, World War II, the Cold War, would be relevant and we invite papers from all periods and geographical zones.
Since the ‘historic turn’, a shift has begun to take place in the study of organizational change whereby business historians and historical analysis more generally has taken a greater role. Using history in forming organizational identity often involves sense-making by companies (Ravasi and Schultz, 2006). Recent research has included analysis of ceremonies, rituals and objects. Rituals, as historic events, contain rich levels of symbolism and follow a set of established conventions (Dacin et al., 2010). Objects, such as ornaments, portraits, other paraphernalia and even architecture or museums, exist as a manifestation of a collective memory, a historical record of the organization’s past (Decker 2014; Suddaby, Foster and Quinn Trank 2016, Barnes and Newton, 2017). They serve as ‘talking points’ or a ‘show and tell’ to explain organizational culture, an event or the meaning of an act which has taken place (Ames, 1980; Rafaeli and Pratt, 1993). Textual and oral memory forms can be used as memory cues, which enable those in the present to construct organizational identity that complies with current and future requirements (Schultz and Hernes 2013, 4). While the past can be used and manipulated, it is not always controlled by those with power at the top of the hierarchy (Rowlinson and Hassard 1993; Maclean et al. 2014).
There is a wealth of literature on the memorialization of war at the individual, national, European and international level. Mosse examines the commemoration of soldiers after war, and the role this has in turning war into a sacred event (1990). The role that remembering of war has in creating both national and European identities is considered by Niznik (2013) and its role in influencing post-war European politics is analyzed by Muller (2002). Others consider an international perspective (Sumartojo and Wellings, 2014), whilst the role of museums in remembering war is considered by Williams (2007) and Kjeldbaek (2009). Yet less has been written about how organizations remember war and how such remembering (or forgetting) influences their identify.
This call for papers invites potential contributions from those that employ innovative methodologies to examine individuals, groups or organizations and their experience of war.
Potential topics might include:
Process and timeline
Those interested in potentially contributing should contact the two guest editors at the earliest opportunity:
Victoria Barnes: Barnes@rg.mpg.de
Lucy Newton: L.A.Newton@henley.ac.uk
A paper development workshop will be held in Henley Business School, University of Reading in December 2017.
Manuscripts are to be submitted to Management and Organization History in the normal way. Authors should make it clear that the paper is intended to be part of the Special Issue.
The deadline for submission of papers for the Special Issue is February 28th 2018 with an aim to get final versions accepted by September 2018 for publication.
The Special Issue is timed to coincide with Armistice Day and will appear in November 2018 (Vol. 13, No. 4).
References
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Diego M. Coraiola – Universidade Positivo, Brazil (dcoraiola@gmail.com)
Roy Suddaby – University of Victoria, Canada (rsuddaby@uvic.ca)
Maria Jose Murcia – University of British Columbia, Canada and IAE Universidad Austral, Argentina (majosemurcia@gmail.com)
Mar Pérezts – EMLYON Business School, France (perezts@em-lyon.com)
Bill Cooke – York University, UK (bill.cooke@york.ac.uk)
The notion of organizational resilience implies an implicit theory of organizations in time. Organizational survival lies in the ability of adapting to present and future demands from the environment as well as remaining true to an organization’s essence. Simply put, resilience is about being able to change and yet to remain the same. Reaching a proper balance between the old and the new or the past and the future is an ambidexterous act of exploration and exploitation or a paradox of similarity-distinctiveness. It involves establishing links between the legacies of organizational identities established in the past to aspirational strategies of an imagined future organization. However, there is still little knowledge of how the connections between the present and past of organizational action are created and sustained over time.
There is mixed evidence about the role of the past and history in organization survival. The past, it seems, can both enable and constrain adaptation and change. While for some scholars history defines the boundaries of organizational action and the possibilities of organizational resilience (David, 1985; Hannan & Freeman, 1989; Marquis, 2003; Porter, 1998; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997), for others the meaning of past actions and events is open for reinterpretation and reshaping through present actions and capabilities. (Coraiola, Foster, & Suddaby, 2015; Mena, Rintamäki, Fleming, & Spicer, 2016; Suddaby & Foster, 2016; Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010; Zundel, Holt, & Popp, 2016). Empirical research on the mnemonics of organizational life might provide a better understanding of the organizational capabilities in generating alternative paths and adapting to changing environmental conditions and at the same time remaining true to themselves.
Our goal for this sub-theme, therefore, is to encourage theory on the mnemonic processes managers and organizations engage with in order to generate continuity and change with the past in ways that assure organizational survival and advantage them in the present and future. This calls for great variety of theoretical perspectives and empirical settings in order to start generating the cumulative evidence about the influences of historical legacies and the organizational ability for managing the past. Submissions focusing on the mnemonics of organizational resilience could look at:
The focus of this sub-theme is thus to provide new and more encompassing evidence about the enabling and constraining effects of the past for organizational resilience and survival. Researchers are encouraged to submit papers for this sub-theme with theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions. Our goal is to foster discussions around the influence of the past, present, and future of managerial action on organizational continuity and change.
References
Anteby, M., & Molnár, V. (2012). Collective Memory Meets Organizational Identity: Remembering to Forget in a Firm’s Rhetorical History. Academy of Management Journal, 55(3), 515-540.
Brunninge, O. (2009). Using history in organizations: How managers make purposeful reference to history in strategy processes. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22(1), 8-26.
Coraiola, D. M., Foster, W. M., & Suddaby, R. (2015). Varieties of History in Organization Studies. In P. G. McLaren, A. J. Mills & T. G. Weatherbee (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Management & Organizational History (pp. 206-221). New York: Routledge.
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Foster, W. M., Coraiola, D. M., Suddaby, R., Kroezen, J., & Chandler, D. (Forthcoming). The strategic use of historical narratives: A theoretical framework. Business History.
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Hannan, M. T., & Freeman, J. (1989). Organizational Ecology. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Maclean, M., Harvey, C., Sillince, J. A. A., & Golant, B. D. (2014). Living up to the past? Ideological sensemaking in organizational transition. Organization, 21(4), 543-567.
Marquis, C. (2003). The Pressure of the Past: Network Imprinting in Intercorporate Communities. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48(4), 655-689.
Mena, S., Rintamäki, J., Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2016). On the Forgetting of Corporate Irresponsibility. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 720-738.
Porter, M. E. (1998). Cluster and the new economics of competition. Harvard Business Review, 76(6), 77-90.
Ravasi, D., & Schultz, M. (2006). Responding to organizational identity threats: Exploring the role of organizational culture. Academy of Management Journal, 49(3), 433-458.
Schrempf-Stirling, J., Palazzo, G., & Phillips, R. (2016). Historic Corporate Social Responsibility. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 700-719.
Schultz, M., & Hernes, T. (2013). A Temporal Perspective on Organizational Identity. Organization Science, 24(1), 1-21.
Suddaby, R. (2016). Toward a Historical Consciousness: Following the Historic Turn in Management Thought. M@n@gement: Revue officielle de l’Association Internationale de Management Stratégique, 19(1), 46-60.
Suddaby, R., & Foster, W. M. (2016). History and Organizational Change. Journal of Management, 43(1), 19-38.
Suddaby, R., Foster, W. M., & Trank, C. Q. (2010). Rhetorical history as a source of competitive advantage. In J. A. C. Baum & J. Lampel (Eds.), Advances in Strategic Management: The Globalization of Strategy Research (pp. 147-173). Bingley: Emerald.
Suddaby, R., Foster, W. M., & Trank, C. Q. (2016). Re-membering: Rhetorical History as Identity-Work. In M. G. Pratt , M. Schultz, B. E. Ashforth & D. Ravasi (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Identity (pp. 297-316). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sydow, J., & Schreyögg, G. (2013). Self-reinforcing processes in and among organizations. Hampshire: Palgrave.
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Teece, D. J., Pisano, G., & Shuen, A. (1997). Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management. Strategic Management Journal, 18(7), 509-533.
Ybema, S. (2010). Talk of change: Temporal contrasts and collective identities. Organization Studies, 31(4), 481-503.
Zundel, M., Holt, R., & Popp, A. (2016). Using history in the creation of organizational identity. Management & Organizational History, 1-25.
Note: We thank Maria Del Pilar Acosta Collazos, Sébastien Mena, and William M. Foster for their contribution in developing the proposal for this sub-theme.
Organizational History Network 