Collective Memory Meets Organizational Identity: Remembering to Forget in a Firm's Rhetorical History | Zendy

Michel Anteby | Zendy; Virág Molnár | Zendy

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Collective Memory Meets Organizational Identity: Remembering to Forget in a Firm's Rhetorical History

Author(s) -

Michel Anteby,

Virág Molnár

Publication year - 2012

Publication title -

academy of management journal

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 11.193

H-Index - 318

eISSN - 1948-0989

pISSN - 0001-4273

DOI - 10.5465/amj.2010.0245

Subject(s) - organizational identity , rhetorical question , collective memory , psychology , organizational behavior , organizational memory , sociology , identity (music) , social psychology , organizational theory , organizational studies , organizational learning , organizational commitment , public relations , management , political science , linguistics , aesthetics , economics , law , philosophy

Much organizational identity research has grappled with the question of identity emergence or change. Yet the question of identity endurance is equally puzzling. Relying primarily on an analysis of 309 internal bulletins produced at a French aeronautics firm over almost 50 years, we theorize a link between collective memory and organizational identity endurance. More specifically, we show how forgetting in a firm's ongoing rhetorical history-here, the bulletins' repeated omission of contradictory elements in the firm's past (i.e., structural omission) or attempts to neutralize them with valued identity cues (i.e., preemptive neutralization)-sustains its identity. Thus, knowing "who we are" might depend in part on repeatedly remembering to forget "who we were not."

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