Managing history: How New Zealand's Gallagher Group used rhetorical narratives to reprioritize and modify imprinted strategic guideposts

Abstract

Research Summary Imprinting theory predicts that organizations are imprinted with multiple intersecting imprints that persist. Evidence suggests, however, that imprints are sometimes reprioritized or modified, implying that they can be strategically managed. We draw upon rhetorical history research and an in‐depth historical case study of New Zealand's Gallagher Group to describe how one firm managed its imprints. Our inductive theorizing links historically imprinted strategic guideposts to decision‐making via two rearranging processes—that is, prioritizing and suspending—wherein managers use narratives to rearrange guideposts' influence and two scope modifying processes—that is, constraining and expanding—wherein managers change where guideposts apply. As a first explanation of how imprints are managed, these processes add nuance to existing theory and open new research avenues regarding additional processes and boundary conditions. Managerial Summary Imprints are elements of culture, strategy, structure, or decision‐making that emerge when the firm is founded or during times of turmoil. Imprints resist change and make organizational adaptation difficult. This study explains one way that managers manipulate imprinted decision‐making rules so that organizations can adapt. Using an in‐depth historical case study of New Zealand's Gallagher Group from 1938 to 2015, we follow four imprinted decision‐making rules that we call strategic guideposts and show how managers rhetorically revised these rules to adapt organizational decision‐making to changing environments. Managers prioritized some decision‐making rules while deemphasizing others or they changed their claims about the kinds of decisions where a decision‐rule applied. Knowing these rhetorical processes can help managers leverage their organization's history to facilitate necessary organizational change.

Managing Traditions: A Critical Capability for Family Business Success

“…As a result, existing studies continue to see traditions as a restraint on managerial agency, rather than as an interpretive resource that can be used to promote change and adaptation while still honoring the past. One exception is Sinha et al (2020). Beyond observing rhetorical strategies of periodization or bracketing in a family business that strategically restructured its family history narratives to draw attention to some events in the family history and distract attention from others, the authors observed that the family business modified historical narratives beyond their original meaning—a process referred to as modifying guideposts .…”

Call for Papers for the 2023 Family Business Review (FBR) Special Issue on History-informed Family Business Research

“…Because of the prominence of history in family businesses, these firms have often been stigmatized as a form of business organization that is steadfast to its history and traditions, path dependent, conservative, resistant to changes and unable to adapt to dynamic and constantly evolving markets (Chandler, 1977; Morck & Yeung, 2003; Poza et al, 1997). Yet, family businesses remain dominant in any economy (La Porta et al, 1999), many of them are highly innovative (De Massis et al, 2018), resilient to crises, and equipped with the stamina to pursue entrepreneurial projects over generations (Jaskiewicz et al, 2016; Sinha, Jaskiewicz, Gibb, & Combs, 2020). The latter is consistent with emerging research suggesting that the history and traditions of families and their businesses do not have to be a rigid burden but, in some cases, can be a holy grail for enduring innovation and change (Erdogan et al, 2020; Jaskiewicz, Combs, & Ketchen, 2016; Suddaby & Jaskiewicz, 2020).…”

“…While researchers thus recognize the paradoxical nature of the family business as an organization that can be burdened or empowered by history, theory on how history actually ties into family business’ tradition, change, and aspiration remains scarce (De Massis, Frattini, Kotlar, Messeni Petruzzelli, & Wright, 2016; Erdogan et al, 2020; Sinha et al, 2020; Suddaby, Coraiola, Harvey, & Foster, 2020; Suddaby & Jaskiewicz, 2020). One reason for this unsatisfactory status quo is the weak connection between history and family business scholarship that has limited current understanding of what family business scholars can learn from the wealth of history and historical research, and how they can integrate related learnings in the study of family business (e.g., Colli, 2003; Colli & Fernandez Perez, 2020).…”

“…Considering the rapidly growing interest in studying the link between history and family businesses, we believe that it is warranted and timely to build a strong foundation for a history-informed approach to the study of family businesses, by which we refer to family business research that draws on historical research methods and/or leverages history as a key component (or variable) of theory or empirical analysis (Argyres et al, 2020; Sasaki et al, 2020; Sinha et al, 2020; Suddaby & Foster, 2017; Suddaby et al, 2020).…”

Articulating Values Through Identity Work: Advancing Family Business Ethics Research

“…The use of (historical) narratives to investigate how business leaders "promote conceptions of identity likely to resonate with audiences" (Basque & Langley, 2018, p. 4) is well established in organizational identity research (Zundel et al, 2016;Anteby & Molnár, 2012); and recently also emerged in family business research (e.g. Sinha et al, 2019). We follow this tradition of rhetorical analysis and apply it to business ethics (see Werner, 2008).…”