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A narrative of the historic turn in organization studies

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Michael Rowlinson discusses that the status of historical narratives in management studies is a key issue for the historic turn.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 25, 2024

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The speaker discusses their contribution to the "Handbook of Historical Methods for Management," which culminates a historic turn in management studies over the past two decades. They emphasize the importance of articulating historical methods in management research to align with conventional social science standards. The speaker, along with co-authors, decided to focus on narrative as a legitimate historical method, highlighting its significance in telling stories that connect historical events in management. They reflect on their experiences revisiting past works and stress that effective historical writing should incorporate narrative, making it engaging rather than strictly analytical.

The speaker also explains their current research project on internal communication in organizations, particularly how historical narratives have shaped corporate culture. They address the need for organizations to confront their pasts and effectively communicate this history, especially in light of contemporary issues like corporate social responsibility. The speaker expresses optimism that their work will help legitimize storytelling in academic settings and facilitate more impactful historical research in management. They hope to contribute to a broader conversation about internal communication and the use of historical narratives to enhance organizational identity and action.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This, chapter is in, a book,

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I dunno if you can see the book.

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Uh, this is the Handbook of Historical Methods

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for Management, edited by Stephanie Decker,

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bill Foster, and Elena Gev.

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And, really it's the culmination of,

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of the historic term in many ways in management.

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Because if we are talking about history in management in the

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business school, then we're talking

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to other social scientists

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and they expect us to be able to articulate our methods,

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our research methods, in the way that they do

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in a conventional,

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method section in their research papers.

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So part of a historic turn has been

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to articulate historical methods for management.

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And this book is the culmination of that.

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It's about 20 years in the making.

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Uh, and so it's a fantastic thing to be part of.

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And when they said, would I like to write a chapter,

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then we discussed what it could be on.

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And I, I, I agreed to write the chapter with Stephanie

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and, John Hasard, Stephanie Decker

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and John Hassard, who are my longtime co-authors,

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about narrative and the role of narrative

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because people don't usually write about narrative

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as a method, 'cause it, it's just what historians do.

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But I decided that it would be a good idea

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to articulate narrative as a method,

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in this chapter.

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And, and it was fun to do

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'cause it meant revisiting all these old papers

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that I'd written quite a long time ago.

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Uh, I think the first paper

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with the term historic term was 2004.

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I wrote a paper called, the Treatment of History

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and Organization Studies towards a Historic

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Term question mark.

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And, so 20 years on this book's

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been out the Historical Methods for management.

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So I think the historic term has been well underway.

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It's, it's ironic

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because when we wrote the paper, we said, well,

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various people have tried to make management

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and organization studies more historical.

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But when you read the stuff,

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it's not really very historical.

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'cause they don't tell stories.

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They don't write narratives in the way that historians do.

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They do a bit more, they do now a bit.

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Well, our main interest has been talking

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to other academics in the business school.

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Uh, alongside that, each

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of us have done various historical projects.

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Um, the, the main project

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that I'm involved in at the moment is a history of

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internal communication in organizations.

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Starting out really in the early

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20th century, or going back to the end of the 19th century

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when companies started to produce magazines

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for their employees mainly.

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Uh, and these, these became a real

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institution in many big companies.

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Almost all companies had had one.

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Um, and that was,

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they didn't use the term corporate culture,

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but that was the vehicle that they used to try to create a,

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a sense of community in the workforce, to foster a a

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what we would now call a, a corporate culture, shall we say.

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Um, and a mainstay of that kind

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of communication is the history of the organization itself.

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Uh, commemorative events, anniversaries

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and anniversaries of individuals, births, marriages,

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deaths, et cetera.

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So the past to some extent, constitutes that kind

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of internal communication.

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The whole book is just about every method

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that you can think about.

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It's not really a quantitative methods.

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Um, but, the, the book as a whole,

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is trying to,

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the issue, the way I put it is,

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what would you put in the method section

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of a historical paper that you send to a management journal,

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an academic journal?

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What do you put in the method section?

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Um, and initially when people tried to answer that question,

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they, they kind of said, well, we are historians.

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There is one historical method, there's one way.

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This is the way you do history.

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And I said, no, that's not the case.

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'cause people do history in all sorts of different ways.

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They have different approaches,

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they just don't usually articulate it.

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And what's more, if we all did exactly the same thing,

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that would make for a very boring method section

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in every historical paper

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you submit to a management journal.

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'cause they'd all be the same. So that's a,

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that's a non-starter.

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So I said, let's, let's try to think about

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what are the different ways in which

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people approach history.

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And we, we did this, this was a paper that was, again,

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published about 10 years ago.

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Me, John, and Stephanie, the same team in the Academy

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of Management Review, which was a kind of a landmark paper,

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which said, well, what the

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alternative ways in which we could write history.

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Let's not write the historical method.

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Let's try to articulate different approaches

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that you could have.

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Um, and to some extent that depends on how narrative,

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how much narrative you want.

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How much storytelling do you want to have?

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Is it gonna be mainly storytelling

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or is it gonna be mainly analytical?

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Well, that's a terminology

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that we've borrowed from literary theorists.

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So literary theorists talk about, you know, how is a,

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how is a narrative constructed?

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And the first thing to think about is what's the story?

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What, what are the events that you're gonna, talk about?

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And then you, you can't just have a series

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of random disconnected events.

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You need some kind of connection, something that connection

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connect connects them.

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And that's the plot. Why does one

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thing lead to another thing?

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What's the plot? And then the author thinks, well,

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how am I gonna present this?

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What's the form that it's gonna take?

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I mean, in, in, in many ways that's dictated

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for you if you're writing for an academic paper,

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'cause you have to have the paraphernalia of references

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and footnotes, et cetera.

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Uh, but you still have decisions as to how to periodize, how

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to chunk up the different, periods that you're gonna

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use, what you're gonna call those periods.

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And how just

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because things happen in a chronological order,

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you don't necessarily have to relate them in exactly

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that chronological order.

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You can decide how to relate them going back,

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looking forwards, looking backwards.

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And that's what I was trying

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to demonstrate in this particular chapter.

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And, and in principle, if you're gonna tell somebody how

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to write a narrative instead of a kind of a toolkit,

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I thought, well, the best way in principle is

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to write a narrative myself.

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So me, John, and Stephanie agreed to write this narrative

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of the historic term.

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So it's a kind of a chronological story of

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let's say the story would be the events.

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Well, these would, these would be the key publications

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over a say a 20 year period.

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And then the plot, the plot is kind of ironic

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because what we're saying, well,

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there have been these landmark papers, yes,

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there's been more history in business schools,

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more history published in management journals.

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But ironically, as history's become more accepted,

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narrative tends to get marginalized.

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'cause they, they, they want it

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to be more systematic, more analytical.

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But every now and again, somebody publishes a great paper.

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And it is the royal way of telling is a story.

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Uh, and my co-author John Hasad did a story about,

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I dunno if you've ever heard of the Hawthorne experiments.

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He revisited the Hawthorne experiments, one

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of the most famous studies in management.

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And it was a story, and it's a great story

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and it don't, so every now and again, somebody comes back

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and says, well the way to really get to grips

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with this is to tell a great story.

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The story is the, is the event.

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So in, in this paper, the story would consist

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of the key publications.

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So I've selected a set of key publications, said, right,

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I wanna get all these key publications.

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So how could I do this differently?

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Well, typically in management,

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what you would do is you would say, right,

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I've got say 20 papers here that I want

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to talk about, selected the key papers.

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Now I'm gonna do, a little matrix two by two matrix

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and say, right, I'm gonna put five in this box, two

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by two matrix, four boxes.

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I'll put five in this box, five in this box, six in

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that box, four in that box or whatever.

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And that, and say, this is how they

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are different along two dimensions.

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That would be the classic way to

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write a paper in management.

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Instead of doing that, what I've said is right here are the

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20 odd papers.

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I'm gonna more

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or less tell you a chronological order of them.

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Not exactly chronological

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'cause some of them go in a little sequence.

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And then there's another sequence

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of say, half a dozen papers.

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And there might be an overlap between those two sequences.

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But really it's a broadly chronological,

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story with the papers in order.

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But it can't be just, well, there was this one

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and then there was that one, and then there was that one.

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There has to be something that says what connects them.

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And what connects them is the plot

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and the narrative is the form in which I decided to tell it.

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I could have told it as a personal story.

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There was me, M**k

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and I met some friends, bill, John, Stephanie,

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and we had a pint here and we went for coffee there.

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That could have been a different way to tell,

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it would've been the same, more or less the same plot,

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but a different kind of narrative.

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But I thought, no, this has got to be an academic narrative.

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'cause it's an academic book.

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So I'm gonna have this series of papers,

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but I'm not gonna put them into a two by two matrix.

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I'm not gonna discuss it analytically.

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I'm gonna discuss them in a kind of a story.

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If you want to know how to write a story, don't try

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and write it as a toolkit.

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'cause that, that's a contradiction in terms to say, well,

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if you want to write a story, this is, this is

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how I came to write this story.

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I think of it sometimes, like, telling a joke.

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You know, I've got a book somewhere about, somebody

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who went on a course on how to, how to do comedy.

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But if you wrote a good story,

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you wouldn't need a methods chapter

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to tell you how you wrote it.

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You just enjoy the story.

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So it's a little bit forced to say, this is how

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to write a study.

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The proof of it will be, if,

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if it improves people's writing in management makes them

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think about, well, do I want

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to present this stuff analytically

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or would it be better to present this in a narrative form?

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If more people said, yeah, I could present this

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as a narrative, that would be really interesting that,

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that then that would be a success.

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People naturally tell you stories if you interview them.

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Um, I just did some, a couple of interviews,

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about something completely different about,

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what, whether lecturers wear suits

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to work when they're lecturing.

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I just happened to be doing an interview and,

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and the best bits of the interview is when the interviewee

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who was asking about this, starts telling me stories,

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funny stories about, you know, where he used to work and,

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and, the students, it was eight o'clock in the morning,

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an early start, and he said, some of the students used

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to come in pajamas and I was wearing a suit.

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You know, so people tell you stories.

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Uh, and so yeah, management is, is a good,

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almost anything is lends itself to stories.

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It, it is whether storytelling is seen

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as a legit, legitimate way to make a point.

12:59.235 --> 13:04.215
And in academic journals, it tends not

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to be so legitimate.

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So what I've been trying to do is to write stuff that

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legitimates more history

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and reflecting on how to write it,

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makes it less, yeah, hopefully makes it

13:22.715 --> 13:25.045
more reputable as a, as a a format.

13:25.825 --> 13:28.565
You know, you're always gonna have people who know I say,

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no, no, no, it is gotta be, it's gotta look scientific.

13:31.825 --> 13:34.245
And, you know, you gotta have analysis

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and preferably quants, and that's all fine.

13:39.435 --> 13:42.695
But I think there's a space for storytelling, a turn in

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an academic field.

13:45.165 --> 13:48.575
It's never a turn where everyone turns in one direction.

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It's a tendency, I I suppose you could call it a

13:51.535 --> 13:53.495
historical tendency in management.

13:54.195 --> 13:58.375
Um, well, I think this book, as I'm,

13:58.555 --> 14:00.975
as I'm trying to plug obviously is,

14:01.595 --> 14:06.355
is in many ways the culmination of this, historic term,

14:06.855 --> 14:08.595
historical methods for management.

14:08.695 --> 14:11.715
I'm, I'm really pleased that, I mean, I know,

14:11.875 --> 14:14.675
I know these three authors, the, the editors,

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obviously Stephanie Decker is one of my co-authors.

14:18.335 --> 14:23.045
And, so hopefully this is a kind of the culmination

14:23.045 --> 14:27.085
of it, but it's obviously more diffused now when it started,

14:27.865 --> 14:31.005
when we published this paper 20 years ago,

14:31.185 --> 14:33.805
it took a long time to get any acceptance.

14:34.425 --> 14:37.445
Um, I think one,

14:37.775 --> 14:40.725
other people independently have come to the sort of similar

14:42.275 --> 14:46.915
i, conclusion, especially a group in,

14:47.105 --> 14:49.635
well, the group that Bill Foster is involved with.

14:49.975 --> 14:53.085
And one of the concepts that they came up with was,

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rhetorical history, which is looking at how

14:57.795 --> 15:01.685
organizations actually use their past in the pres in the

15:01.685 --> 15:04.045
present to legitimate themselves

15:04.745 --> 15:08.125
and also historic corporate social responsibility.

15:08.265 --> 15:12.975
How companies are increasingly being asked to

15:13.915 --> 15:15.375
be responsible for everything

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that happens in their value chains.

15:17.515 --> 15:19.295
You know, for example,

15:19.365 --> 15:22.335
they have the modern slavery statement on many corporate

15:22.335 --> 15:25.215
websites to say, look, we've looked through the value chain

15:25.315 --> 15:28.015
and far as we, as far as we can make out there,

15:28.015 --> 15:30.335
there's no forced labor in any

15:30.335 --> 15:33.175
of our supply chain, which is great.

15:34.035 --> 15:38.065
Um, but increasingly

15:38.625 --> 15:41.665
companies are being asked to say, what about in your past?

15:42.365 --> 15:45.545
Um, have you always, and

15:45.565 --> 15:49.545
and obviously many organizations discover things in their

15:49.545 --> 15:52.425
past that they wouldn't do now,

15:52.965 --> 15:55.505
or they might wish they, they hadn't done.

15:55.525 --> 15:59.785
And it's how, how they decide to maybe come clean about that

16:00.005 --> 16:01.185
or present it.

16:01.845 --> 16:06.295
Um, so these concepts of rhetorical history,

16:06.515 --> 16:09.695
how companies use history strategically,

16:09.845 --> 16:11.735
obviously organizations are a product

16:11.835 --> 16:14.135
of their past in the way that they do things, that,

16:14.135 --> 16:16.455
the routines that they have, the different ways

16:16.455 --> 16:20.565
that they innovate, but they can also have

16:21.525 --> 16:23.325
exercise, some control an agency about

16:23.325 --> 16:25.925
how they present their past in order

16:25.945 --> 16:28.205
to legitimate themselves in the present.

16:28.545 --> 16:31.725
So that's concept of rhetorical history, which is,

16:31.775 --> 16:36.085
which has really taken off, which I would say is in parallel

16:36.155 --> 16:39.285
with the historic term, which I've been talking about.

16:39.745 --> 16:43.725
And this concept of historic corporate social responsibility

16:44.545 --> 16:47.325
is increasingly relevant recently

16:47.435 --> 16:49.365
because of the Black Lives Matter.

16:49.945 --> 16:54.745
Um, so last week, I took a group

16:54.745 --> 16:57.345
of students to, the Bank of England

16:58.045 --> 17:02.525
and the Bank of England has a special exhibition in their

17:02.545 --> 17:06.005
museum about the bank and slavery.

17:06.905 --> 17:10.045
Um, so that's the Bank of England coming to terms with

17:10.825 --> 17:14.155
what's a, could be perceived as a difficult past.

17:15.095 --> 17:19.315
I'm hoping that the, that the book will facilitate people

17:19.335 --> 17:23.235
who are publishing, historical stuff,

17:23.585 --> 17:26.995
will allow them to make it even easier for them

17:27.095 --> 17:29.835
to get published in management journals.

17:29.955 --> 17:33.635
I, I think there's been a, a big change that journals,

17:34.155 --> 17:35.635
academic journals are much more receptive

17:35.635 --> 17:36.995
to this kind of material.

17:38.355 --> 17:42.285
I hope coming out of the research that I'm doing on,

17:43.245 --> 17:47.525
internal communication, I hope that we can come up with some

17:48.155 --> 17:51.295
helpful suggestions for organizations as how, how

17:51.715 --> 17:52.735
to deal with the past.

17:52.835 --> 17:55.935
We, we can look at examples of organizations that have dealt

17:55.935 --> 17:58.415
with it better perhaps than others,

17:58.835 --> 18:01.295
and try to draw out the lessons

18:01.755 --> 18:04.415
and say to organizations, well, if you're thinking about,

18:04.715 --> 18:06.455
and they're already consultants who,

18:06.645 --> 18:10.655
there's a big consulting, not big consulting industry,

18:10.715 --> 18:13.175
but there is a consultancy industry.

18:13.175 --> 18:14.895
There's a company, the History Factory,

18:15.265 --> 18:18.735
which will advise organizations how to deal with their past

18:18.835 --> 18:22.215
and archivists, are interested in this.

18:22.235 --> 18:24.215
So I think we'd like to be part of that

18:24.765 --> 18:28.655
more practical debate as well as the academic debates.

18:28.955 --> 18:32.055
So the academic debates about getting more historical stuff

18:32.055 --> 18:33.575
published in academic journals.

18:33.875 --> 18:37.135
But alongside that, I hope that we can have a discussion of,

18:37.845 --> 18:41.575
well what about the internal communications as a profession

18:41.835 --> 18:45.455
and archivist who working companies as a profession,

18:45.915 --> 18:49.175
how they can, raise their profile

18:49.435 --> 18:53.575
and have discussions with academics about how

18:53.835 --> 18:55.895
to improve communication in organizations.

18:56.085 --> 18:57.655
That would be brilliant.

Exploring Historical Narrative in Management Methodology

00:00:00 - This, chapter is in, a book, I dunno if you can see the book. this is the Handbook of Historical Methods for Management, edited by Stephanie Decker, bill Foster, and Elena Gev. And, really it's the culmination of, of the historic term in many ways in management. Because if we are talking about history in management in the business school, then we're talking
00:00:33 - and they expect us to be able to articulate our methods, our research methods, in the way that they do in a conventional, method section in their research papers. So part of a historic turn has been to articulate historical methods for management. And this book is the culmination of that. It's about 20 years in the making. and so it's a fantastic thing to be part of.
00:01:07 - then we discussed what it could be on. And I, I, I agreed to write the chapter with Stephanie and, John Hasard, Stephanie Decker and John Hassard, who are my longtime co-authors, about narrative and the role of narrative because people don't usually write about narrative as a method, 'cause it, it's just what historians do. But I decided that it would be a good idea
00:01:39 - in this chapter. And, and it was fun to do 'cause it meant revisiting all these old papers that I'd written quite a long time ago. I think the first paper with the term historic term was 2004. I wrote a paper called, the Treatment of History and Organization Studies towards a Historic Term question mark.
00:02:11 - been out the Historical Methods for management. So I think the historic term has been well underway. It's, it's ironic because when we wrote the paper, we said, well, various people have tried to make management and organization studies more historical. But when you read the stuff, it's not really very historical. 'cause they don't tell stories. They don't write narratives in the way that historians do. They do a bit more, they do now a bit.
00:02:39 - to other academics in the business school. alongside that, each of us have done various historical projects. the, the main project that I'm involved in at the moment is a history of internal communication in organizations. Starting out really in the early 20th century, or going back to the end of the 19th century when companies started to produce magazines

Corporate Culture Through Organizational History

00:03:09 - and these, these became a real institution in many big companies. Almost all companies had had one. and that was, they didn't use the term corporate culture, but that was the vehicle that they used to try to create a, a sense of community in the workforce, to foster a a what we would now call a, a corporate culture, shall we say. and a mainstay of that kind of communication is the history of the organization itself.
00:03:42 - and anniversaries of individuals, births, marriages, deaths, et cetera. So the past to some extent, constitutes that kind of internal communication. The whole book is just about every method that you can think about. It's not really a quantitative methods. but, the, the book as a whole,
00:04:16 - the issue, the way I put it is, what would you put in the method section of a historical paper that you send to a management journal, an academic journal? What do you put in the method section? and initially when people tried to answer that question, they, they kind of said, well, we are historians. There is one historical method, there's one way.
00:04:47 - And I said, no, that's not the case. 'cause people do history in all sorts of different ways. They have different approaches, they just don't usually articulate it. And what's more, if we all did exactly the same thing, that would make for a very boring method section in every historical paper you submit to a management journal. 'cause they'd all be the same. So that's a, that's a non-starter. So I said, let's, let's try to think about
00:05:14 - people approach history. And we, we did this, this was a paper that was, again, published about 10 years ago. Me, John, and Stephanie, the same team in the Academy of Management Review, which was a kind of a landmark paper, which said, well, what the alternative ways in which we could write history. Let's not write the historical method. Let's try to articulate different approaches that you could have. and to some extent that depends on how narrative,
00:05:48 - How much storytelling do you want to have? Is it gonna be mainly storytelling or is it gonna be mainly analytical? Well, that's a terminology that we've borrowed from literary theorists. So literary theorists talk about, you know, how is a, how is a narrative constructed? And the first thing to think about is what's the story? What, what are the events that you're gonna, talk about? And then you, you can't just have a series

Crafting Narratives in Academic Writing

00:06:19 - You need some kind of connection, something that connection connect connects them. And that's the plot. Why does one thing lead to another thing? What's the plot? And then the author thinks, well, how am I gonna present this? What's the form that it's gonna take? I mean, in, in, in many ways that's dictated for you if you're writing for an academic paper, 'cause you have to have the paraphernalia of references and footnotes, et cetera. but you still have decisions as to how to periodize, how
00:06:53 - use, what you're gonna call those periods. And how just because things happen in a chronological order, you don't necessarily have to relate them in exactly that chronological order. You can decide how to relate them going back, looking forwards, looking backwards. And that's what I was trying to demonstrate in this particular chapter. And, and in principle, if you're gonna tell somebody how
00:07:23 - I thought, well, the best way in principle is to write a narrative myself. So me, John, and Stephanie agreed to write this narrative of the historic term. So it's a kind of a chronological story of let's say the story would be the events. Well, these would, these would be the key publications over a say a 20 year period. And then the plot, the plot is kind of ironic
00:07:53 - there have been these landmark papers, yes, there's been more history in business schools, more history published in management journals. But ironically, as history's become more accepted, narrative tends to get marginalized. 'cause they, they, they want it to be more systematic, more analytical. But every now and again, somebody publishes a great paper. And it is the royal way of telling is a story. and my co-author John Hasad did a story about,
00:08:30 - He revisited the Hawthorne experiments, one of the most famous studies in management. And it was a story, and it's a great story and it don't, so every now and again, somebody comes back and says, well the way to really get to grips with this is to tell a great story. The story is the, is the event. So in, in this paper, the story would consist of the key publications. So I've selected a set of key publications, said, right, I wanna get all these key publications.
00:09:00 - Well, typically in management, what you would do is you would say, right, I've got say 20 papers here that I want to talk about, selected the key papers. Now I'm gonna do, a little matrix two by two matrix and say, right, I'm gonna put five in this box, two by two matrix, four boxes. I'll put five in this box, five in this box, six in that box, four in that box or whatever. And that, and say, this is how they are different along two dimensions.

Crafting Academic Narratives in Management Writing

00:09:31 - write a paper in management. Instead of doing that, what I've said is right here are the 20 odd papers. I'm gonna more or less tell you a chronological order of them. Not exactly chronological 'cause some of them go in a little sequence. And then there's another sequence of say, half a dozen papers. And there might be an overlap between those two sequences. But really it's a broadly chronological, story with the papers in order.
00:10:02 - and then there was that one, and then there was that one. There has to be something that says what connects them. And what connects them is the plot and the narrative is the form in which I decided to tell it. I could have told it as a personal story. There was me, M**k and I met some friends, bill, John, Stephanie, and we had a pint here and we went for coffee there. That could have been a different way to tell,
00:10:35 - but a different kind of narrative. But I thought, no, this has got to be an academic narrative. 'cause it's an academic book. So I'm gonna have this series of papers, but I'm not gonna put them into a two by two matrix. I'm not gonna discuss it analytically. I'm gonna discuss them in a kind of a story. If you want to know how to write a story, don't try and write it as a toolkit. 'cause that, that's a contradiction in terms to say, well,
00:11:05 - how I came to write this story. I think of it sometimes, like, telling a joke. You know, I've got a book somewhere about, somebody who went on a course on how to, how to do comedy. But if you wrote a good story, you wouldn't need a methods chapter to tell you how you wrote it. You just enjoy the story. So it's a little bit forced to say, this is how
00:11:35 - The proof of it will be, if, if it improves people's writing in management makes them think about, well, do I want to present this stuff analytically or would it be better to present this in a narrative form? If more people said, yeah, I could present this as a narrative, that would be really interesting that, that then that would be a success. People naturally tell you stories if you interview them.
00:12:10 - about something completely different about, what, whether lecturers wear suits to work when they're lecturing. I just happened to be doing an interview and, and the best bits of the interview is when the interviewee who was asking about this, starts telling me stories, funny stories about, you know, where he used to work and, and, the students, it was eight o'clock in the morning,

Reclaiming Narrative in Academic Management Discourse

00:12:38 - to come in pajamas and I was wearing a suit. You know, so people tell you stories. and so yeah, management is, is a good, almost anything is lends itself to stories. It, it is whether storytelling is seen as a legit, legitimate way to make a point. And in academic journals, it tends not to be so legitimate. So what I've been trying to do is to write stuff that
00:13:12 - and reflecting on how to write it, makes it less, yeah, hopefully makes it more reputable as a, as a a format. You know, you're always gonna have people who know I say, no, no, no, it is gotta be, it's gotta look scientific. And, you know, you gotta have analysis and preferably quants, and that's all fine. But I think there's a space for storytelling, a turn in
00:13:45 - It's never a turn where everyone turns in one direction. It's a tendency, I I suppose you could call it a historical tendency in management. well, I think this book, as I'm, as I'm trying to plug obviously is, is in many ways the culmination of this, historic term, historical methods for management. I'm, I'm really pleased that, I mean, I know, I know these three authors, the, the editors,
00:14:18 - And, so hopefully this is a kind of the culmination of it, but it's obviously more diffused now when it started, when we published this paper 20 years ago, it took a long time to get any acceptance. I think one, other people independently have come to the sort of similar i, conclusion, especially a group in,
00:14:49 - And one of the concepts that they came up with was, rhetorical history, which is looking at how organizations actually use their past in the pres in the present to legitimate themselves and also historic corporate social responsibility. How companies are increasingly being asked to be responsible for everything that happens in their value chains.
00:15:19 - they have the modern slavery statement on many corporate websites to say, look, we've looked through the value chain and far as we, as far as we can make out there, there's no forced labor in any of our supply chain, which is great. but increasingly companies are being asked to say, what about in your past? have you always, and and obviously many organizations discover things in their

Navigating Organizational Rhetoric and Responsibility

00:15:52 - or they might wish they, they hadn't done. And it's how, how they decide to maybe come clean about that or present it. so these concepts of rhetorical history, how companies use history strategically, obviously organizations are a product of their past in the way that they do things, that, the routines that they have, the different ways that they innovate, but they can also have
00:16:23 - how they present their past in order to legitimate themselves in the present. So that's concept of rhetorical history, which is, which has really taken off, which I would say is in parallel with the historic term, which I've been talking about. And this concept of historic corporate social responsibility is increasingly relevant recently because of the Black Lives Matter. so last week, I took a group
00:16:58 - and the Bank of England has a special exhibition in their museum about the bank and slavery. so that's the Bank of England coming to terms with what's a, could be perceived as a difficult past. I'm hoping that the, that the book will facilitate people who are publishing, historical stuff, will allow them to make it even easier for them
00:17:29 - I, I think there's been a, a big change that journals, academic journals are much more receptive to this kind of material. I hope coming out of the research that I'm doing on, internal communication, I hope that we can come up with some helpful suggestions for organizations as how, how to deal with the past. We, we can look at examples of organizations that have dealt with it better perhaps than others,
00:18:01 - and say to organizations, well, if you're thinking about, and they're already consultants who, there's a big consulting, not big consulting industry, but there is a consultancy industry. There's a company, the History Factory, which will advise organizations how to deal with their past and archivists, are interested in this. So I think we'd like to be part of that more practical debate as well as the academic debates.
00:18:56 - published in academic journals. But alongside that, I hope that we can have a discussion of, well what about the internal communications as a profession and archivist who working companies as a profession, how they can, raise their profile and have discussions with academics about how to improve communication in organizations. That would be brilliant.

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