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Las empresas suelen anunciar públicamente su longevidad. Para ellas, el pasado tiene un significado claro. Sin embargo, las teorías de la organización que consideran la pervivencia y el papel representado por los fundadores, sobre todo las de tipo ecológico y cultural, no explican los significados colectivos que van unidos al pasado. Tampoco lo hace la literatura sobre la memoria de las organizaciones, que la concibe como una serie de compartimentos estancos. La Historia empresarial se preocupa más por la reconstrucción del pasado desde el momento presente que por los significados implícitos en el pasado. Con el fin de comprender las prácticas sociales (mnemónicas) por las que el pasado es recordado y por las que cobra sentido, nosotros recurrimos al cada vez más importante campo de la memoria social. Para examinar el modo en el que las interpretaciones oficiales están presentes en el pasado de las organizaciones, nos servimos de documentos públicamente disponibles, como memorias de las compañías, informes de prensa, artículos o historias hechas por encargo. Partiendo de los puntos de vista de la memoria social, nos centramos en analizar los centenarios y la creación de lugares de memoria, así como en el tradicional debate sobre la condición histórica de memorias que vertebran la identidad. En el texto, proporcionamos breves ejemplos sobre la celebración del centenario de la Ford, la denominación del centro de formación de directivos de la General Electric como John F. Welch Learning Center, así como de la desacreditadora leyenda de la Bertelsmann, concerniente a su comportamiento durante el dominio nazi en Alemania. Concluimos que el punto de vista de la memoria social puede constituir una base idónea para investigar el significado del pasado en las organizaciones.

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History has long been recognised as a strategic and organisational resource. However, until recently, the advantage conferred by history was attributed to a firm’s ability to accumulate heterogeneous resources or develop opaque practices. In contrast, we argue that the advantage history confers on organisations is based on understanding when the knowledge of the past is referenced and the reasons why it is strategically communicated. We argue that managers package this knowledge in historical narratives to address particular organisational concerns and audiences. As well, we show that different historical narratives are produced with the goal of achieving different organisational outcomes. The success of an organisation is thus dependent on the ability of its managers to skilfully develop historical narratives that create a strategic advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops an ethnographic account of the development and history of the British Airways Heritage Centre (BAHC). Responding to several observations throughout the literature, we report on our experiences of engagement with British Airways’ archives over a 25-year period. In doing so our focus is on the much-neglected history of archives as powerful influences on how corporate histories are written. The ethnographic account is rooted in ANTi-History, an approach to historiography, that focuses on the production of history as knowledge of the past by following a number of human (e.g. archive volunteers) and non-human (e.g. airline artefacts) actors to reassemble the elements that constitute an archive at a point in time. To that end, we trace the inter-relationships between histories of British Airways and the development of the BAHC. We conclude that a focus on the various human and non-human relationships that constitute an archive can help the researcher to identify the hidden influences on the production of history that can otherwise serve to enrol him or her. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay explores new models of the citizen-patient by attending to the post-Revolutionary blind 'voice'. Voice, in both a literal and figurative sense, was central to the way in which members of the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts, an institution for the blind and partially sighted, interacted with those in the community. Musical voices had been used by members to collect alms and to project the particular spiritual principle of their institution since its foundation in the thirteenth century. At the time of the Revolution, the Quinze-Vingts voice was understood by some political authorities as an exemplary call of humanity. Yet many others perceived it as deeply threatening. After 1800, productive dialogue between those in political control and Quinze-Vingts blind members broke down. Authorities attempted to silence the voice of members through the control of blind musicians and institutional management. The Quinze-Vingts blind continued to reassert their voices until around 1850, providing a powerful form of resistance to political control. The blind 'voice' ultimately recognised the right of the citizen-patient to dialogue with their political carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational Memory Studies (OMS) is limited by its managerialist, presentist pre-occupation with the utility of memory for knowledge management. The dominant model of memory in OMS is that of a storage bin. But this model has been rejected by psychologists because it overlooks the distinctly human subjective experience of remembering, i.e. episodic memory. OMS also fails to take account of the specific social and historical contexts of organizational memory. The methodological individualism that is prevalent in OMS makes it difficult to engage with the rapidly expanding sociological and historical literature in social memory studies, where a more social constructionist approach to 'collective memory' is generally favoured. However, for its part social memory studies derived from Maurice Halbwachs neglects organizations, focusing primarily on the nation as a mnemonic community. From a critical perspective organizations can be seen as appropriating society's memory through corporate sites of memory such as historical visitor attractions and corporate museums. There is scope for a sociological and historical reorientation within OMS, drawing on social memory studies and focusing on corporate sites of memory, such as The Henry Ford museum complex, as well as the mnemonic role of founders and beginnings in organizations. Taking a social constructionist, collectivist approach to social remembering in organizations allows connections to be made between memory and other research programmes, such as organizational culture studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]