Strategic management research has demonstrated that firm-specific resources can confer a distinct competitive advantage. This research, however, tends to assume that the resources are fixed and immutable and that they operate inside the organization. We offer a competing view in which resources are socially constructed and operate primarily on external stakeholders. Drawing from emerging research in social memory studies, we argue that historical narratives are an emerging means of socially constructing firm-specific social memory assets that can be used to create competitive advantage. We illustrate our argument through an analysis of how Tim Hor tons, a now iconic Canadian company, uses historical and tradition-based narratives to construct its brand identity.

No abstract

No abstract

We interviewed leaders of small businesses who have integrated spirituality from diverse spiritual traditions into their workplaces. We contribute to a better understanding of the motives and deeply held values behind the integration of spirituality in the small business workplace, of how spiritual values and meaning are manifest in small business, and of how spirituality can be integrated into small business processes and behaviors. We build upon previous theoretical development of an authentically and spirituality informed management theory by focusing on the concepts of immanence and involvement, and integration and interconnectedness, as they relate to ethical and socially responsible behavior in workplaces. Our findings contrast some ways that workplace spirituality has been reported to be institutionalized in the management, spirituality, and religion literature.

Humankind has a long history of seeking to be saved from suffering, although the understanding of just how to achieve this salvation has changed over time. Regardless of how it has been understood, throughout history the dominant understanding of salvation has been associated with how social structures and systems are organized. This article provides an historical review of the relationship between salvation and organizational practices, paying particular attention to various views of salvation within the Western Christian tradition over the past two millennia. Using a three dimensional analytical framework—the modality of salvation, the instantiation of salvation and the locus of ethical activity—we describe key changes in the meaning of salvation over time, and describe hallmark organizational practices associated with each meaning. We conclude by discussing implications of our analysis for examining relationships between organizational practices and salvation in other religious traditions, for developing a more nuanced understanding of emancipation, for developing counter-cultural approaches to management and for strengthening a ‘theological turn’ in organization and management theory.