Who does a company’s past belong to and how can companies stay true to their history? |
Corporate history belongs to everyone. It belongs just as much to communications professionals keen to craft unifying narratives for their clients and staff, as it does to historians who advocate honesty when it comes to the grey areas. To prevent the past from being rewritten, researchers are calling for the promotion of an ‘ethic of organisational memory’.
The way organisations construct their past is never trivial; it is the result of a collective, negotiated – and sometimes conflict-ridden process involving stakeholders with divergent interests. For example, Lacoste makes no mention of the 1990s, a decade marked by internal conflicts. Numerous examples illustrate the ethical questions that society and businesses are only just beginning – at best – to articulate.
In our research, published in the Journal of Business Ethics and Décisions Marketing, we examine how these narratives are actually constructed, who negotiates them, who yields, who resists these constructions, and also what these practices reveal about organisations’ responsibility toward their past.
Our findings have led us to advocate for the emergence of a new ethic of organisational memory centred on dialogue, corporate accountability, spaces for deliberation, and a certain courage in the face of organisations’ potential dark hours.
Corporate museums, travelling exhibitions, commemorative books, advertising campaigns are often saturated with sepia tones and references to a company’s origins… for firms, historical heritage has become an asset in its own right, managed, promoted and monetised. Hermès showcases its archives in a Parisian concept store, Michelin offers an immersive experience in Clermont-Ferrand, and The Laughing Cow (brand of processed cheese) has opened a museum-house on the very site where it was founded in 1921.
Since the mid-2000s, this trend has sparked a wave of research in management sciences centred around ‘uses of the past’. Researchers Andrew Popp, Roy Suddaby, Mads Mordhorst and Daniel Wadhwani have shown that history is not simply about what happened, but what organisations choose to make of it. Roy Suddaby speaks of ‘rhetorical history: the past can be a tool for persuasion, legitimisation and differentiation.
It is within this field that our research is situated, focusing on a question........