Summary
This ongoing project explores how organizations experience history through memory, and how this experience shapes their identity, strategy, and new product development. A comparative study of four corporate museums – Alessi, Alfa Romeo, Ducati, and Piaggio – helped me uncover how material forms of memory are used to inspire current action (Ravasi, Rindova, & Stigliani, 2019). A historical study of family mottos in long-lived Japanese firms has illuminated how organizations grappled with distinguished history when disruptive action is required (Sasaki, Kotlar, Ravasi & Vaara, 2019).
Relevance
This work has contributed to shifting attention from rhetorical reconstructions of history to how history is experienced and grappled with in organizations, by showing that history is less malleable than currently assumed, and what is remembered (or forgotten) about organizations is not entirely under the control of senior managers.