The Stuff of Legend: History, Memory, and the Temporality of Organizational Identity Construction

Abstract

A growing body of research on how organizations engage with their histories has shown that organizational members revisit history in the light of present-day concerns to inspire or legitimate future courses of action. Studies of the processes through which organizational history is brought to bear on the present and future, however, remain rare. To uncover the processes and practices through which organizational members systematically engage with history, we investigated uses of material memory in four corporate museums. Our analysis uncovered three distinct modes of engagement, reflecting different temporal perspectives on organizational identity, involving different cross-temporal interpretative processes, and influencing action in different ways. Our theoretical insights have significant implications not only for understanding the use of history in organizations, but also for research on organizational identity and organizational memory.

Continuity, Change, and New Product Performance: The Role of Stream Concentration*

“…In many industries, businesses develop new products that join an existing portfolio of products connected by a shared identity (Ravasi et al, 2019). However, this challenges NPD teams to strike a balance between continuity and change.…”

“…In contrast, organizational memory is accumulated only over the NPD projects within the focal NPD knowledge domain (Evans et al, 2004; Tasselli et al, 2015). Hence, at the individual level, team members carry with them expectations regarding what product attributes are appropriate for a given set of products which are shaped, at least in part, by their stock of different types of knowledge (Ravasi et al, 2019). For example, inductive research on designers shows how the stocks of aesthetic knowledge—i.e., understanding about the look, feel, smell, taste and sound of certain product attributes (Ewenstein and Whyte, 2007), which designers accumulate through their experiences—affect their choices when searching for new solutions (Stigliani and Ravasi, 2018).…”

“…These experiences contribute to define not only individual expertise and the opportunity for team members to span organizational boundaries (Carbonell and Rodríguez Escudero, 2019; Carley, 1992), but also individual identities and expectations about what is deemed to be appropriate or not for a given knowledge domain, such as a specific organization’s identity (Ravasi et al, 2019). In other words, NPD projects are shaped by distinct knowledge structures: individual and organizational knowledge (Argote, 2013; Dane, 2010; Song and Montoya‐Weiss, 2003; Yayavaram and Ahuja, 2008).…”

“…A new car from the same brand, a new video game in the same franchise, a new music album from the same artist, or a new dish in a popular restaurant chain provide typical examples. This has implications in terms of what product features will be perceived as appropriate or not by an organization and its customers (Ravasi, Rindova, and Stigliani, 2019; Stigliani and Ravasi, 2018). Hence, product development teams are challenged to manage trade‐offs between something old and something new.…”

“…Our theoretical framework builds on an established research tradition which has identified individual and organizational knowledge as distinct knowledge structures which affect NPD (e.g., Argote, 2013; Dane, 2010; Song and Montoya‐Weiss, 2003; Yayavaram and Ahuja, 2008). These structures have been often described as sets of elements representing the content of what an individual or organization knows (Fleming, 2001), as well as individual and organizational memory (Walsh, 1995; Walsh and Ungson, 1991) about which elements work well together (Ravasi et al, 2019; Yayavaram and Ahuja, 2008). Stream concentration captures differences between team members’ knowledge which are likely to affect the management of change in NPD projects.…”