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Sub-theme 70: The Past Through Games of Power: Memory and Organizational History

Convenors:
Amon Barros
FGV EAESP, Brazil
Hamid Foroughi
University of Warwick, UK
Gabrielle Durepos
Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada

Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

The sub-theme “Games of Memory and Power in Organizational History” invites analyses of how organizational actors use traces of the past as a resource to develop persuasive narratives and play political games in and around organizations (Suddaby et al., 2023). Interpretations of the past can be cultivated as memories that circulate within and across organizations (Coraiola et al., 2023) or as narratives that carry moral meanings and frame how actors interpret the past, present, and future (Hampel & Dalpiaz, 2023; Hernes & Schultz, 2020; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005).

Interpretations of the past and the traces on which they rely are always situated in place and time and shaped by power relations (Durepos & Thurlow, 2025; Wanderley & Barros, 2019). Disputes over how the past should be interpreted can turn into conflicts over meanings within, where actors seek to impose meaning on the vastness of the past within the constraints of culture (Suddaby et al., 2023; Vaara & Whittle, 2022). Research on the uses of the past by organizational actors has established that narratives of continuity and rupture are the result of political disputes in which groups seek to establish belonging or exclusion through them (Foroughi, 2020).

Struggles about remembering and forgetting take many forms. From the meaning attributed to objects (Shortt & Izak, 2021), the design and uses of architectural spaces (Decker, 2014; Decker et al., 2024), and intentional narratives designed to narrate histories like corporate museums (Hatfield, 2024; Nissley & Casey, 2002), power games frame the past. Remembering and forgetting are situated outcomes from disputes, and even nonevents and paths not taken continue to influence interpretations (Egholm, 2026). For instance, museums often naturalize the past or invite contestation of established meanings through strategies of display and narration (Aroles et al., 2024). The erasure of slavery from the management discipline is a paradigmatic case of forgetting (Cooke, 2003). Historiographical devices such as periodization (Sadeghi et al., 2024), turning points (Capoccia & Kelemen, 2007; Marquis & Qiao, 2024), and founding moments (Suddaby et al., 2023) are not neutral. They result from choices that privilege actors, geographies, and causal stories while marginalizing others (Durepos & Barros, 2023; Durepos & Thurlow, 2025; Wanderley & Barros, 2019).

This stream invites studies that consider memory not as a repository but as a practice that gives meaning to the past through contested practices. It invites studies investigating the effects of power on remembering and forgetting (Casey & Olivera, 2011; Coraiola et al., 2023; Mena et al., 2016).
Submissions can explore this theme in various contexts. Below are some questions (not exhaustive):

  • How do power games within organizations use history to legitimize strategic agendas or delegitimize alternative interpretations, and with what consequences?
  • How do powerful actors shape which events become remembered, forgotten, or silenced in official organizational histories?
  • How do competing memories coexist, clash, or become reconciled in contexts where organizational histories are contested?
  • How can corporate museums, heritage initiatives, or even sites and objects become arenas for negotiating competing representations of the past?
  • How do historiographical devices (e.g., periodization, turning points, founding stories) become tools of power that privilege some voices and exclude others?
  • How do practices of forgetting—intentional or unintentional—serve political purposes within organizations?
  • How do actors strategically curate traces of the past to craft organizational identity, continuity, or rupture?
  • How do employees resist, reinterpret, or subvert dominant narratives about the organizational past?
  • How do transnational, postcolonial, or multisited organizations negotiate the politics of memory across different cultural or geographic contexts?
  • How do digital technologies and algorithmic curation reshape the politics of remembering and forgetting within organizations?

References
  • Aroles, J., Morrell, K., Granter, E., & Liang, Y. (2024). Representing, re‑presenting, or producing the past? Memory work amongst museum employees. Journal of Management Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13059
  • Capoccia, G., & Kelemen, R. D. (2007). The study of critical junctures: Theory, narrative, and counterfactuals in historical institutionalism. World Politics, 59(3), 341–369. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887100020852
  • Casey, A. J., & Olivera, F. (2011). Reflections on organizational memory and forgetting. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20(3), 305–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492611408264
  • Cooke, B. (2003). The denial of slavery in management studies. Journal of Management Studies, 40(8), 1895–1918. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-6486.2003.00405.x
  • Coraiola, D. M., Foster, W. M., Mena, S., Foroughi, H., & Rintamäki, J. (2023). Ecologies of memories: Memory work within and between organizations and communities. Academy of Management Annals, 17(1), 373–404.
  • Decker, S. (2014). Solid intentions: An archival ethnography of corporate architecture and organizational remembering. Organization, 21(4), 514–542. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508414527252
  • Decker, S., Giovannoni, E., & Plakoyiannaki, E. (2024). A microhistory of architecture historical imagination and the Bauhaus. Management & Organizational History. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2024.2423095
  • Durepos, G., & Barros, A. (2023). Addressing archival silences in business (hi)storytelling. In G. Durepos & A. Thurlow (Eds.), A world scientific encyclopedia of business storytelling: Corporate and business strategies of business storytelling (Vol. 2). World Scientific. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811273476_0002
  • Durepos, G., & Thurlow, A. (2025). Archival research in historical organisation studies: Theorizing silences. Emerald.
  • Egholm, L. (2026). Shadow futures: The persistence of past futures. Management & Organizational History, 21(1–2), 81–91.
  • Foroughi, H. (2020). Collective memories as a vehicle of fantasy and identification: Founding stories retold. Organization Studies, 41(10), 1347–1367. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840619844286
  • Hampel, C. E., & Dalpiaz, E. (2023). Confronting the contested past: Sensemaking and rhetorical history in the reconstruction of organizational identity. Academy of Management Journal, 66(6), 1711–1740. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.1132
  • Hatfield, J. E. (2024). Branding public memory in the Walmart Museum. Memory Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980241255075
  • Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (2020). Translating the distant into the present: How actors address distant past and future events through situated activity. Organization Theory, 1(1), Article 2631787719900999. https://doi.org/10.1177/2631787719900999
  • Marquis, C., & Qiao, K. (2024). History matters for organizations: An integrative framework for understanding influences from the past. Academy of Management Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2022.0238
  • Mena, S., Rintamäki, J., Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2016). On the forgetting of corporate irresponsibility. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 720–738. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0208
  • Nissley, N., & Casey, A. (2002). The politics of the exhibition: Viewing corporate museums through the paradigmatic lens of organizational memory. British Journal of Management, 13(S2), S35–S45.
  • Sadeghi, Y., Islam, G., & Van Lent, W. (2024). Practices of periodization: Towards a critical perspective on temporal division in organizations. Academy of Management Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2022.0396
  • Shortt, H., & Izak, M. (2021). Scarred objects and time marks as memory anchors: The significance of scuffs and stains in organisational life. Human Relations, 74(10), 1688–1715. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726720938848
  • Suddaby, R., & Greenwood, R. (2005). Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50(1), 35–67. http://asq.sagepub.com/content/50/1/35.short
  • Suddaby, R., Israelsen, T., Bastien, F., Saylors, R., & Coraiola, D. (2023). Rhetorical history as institutional work. Journal of Management Studies, 60(1), 242–278. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12860
  • Suddaby, R., Israelsen, T., Mitchell, J. R., & Lim, D. S. K. (2023). Entrepreneurial visions as rhetorical history: A diegetic narrative model of stakeholder enrollment. Academy of Management Review, 48(2), 220–243. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2020.0010
  • Vaara, E., & Whittle, A. (2022). Common sense, new sense or non-sense? A critical discursive perspective on power in collective sensemaking. Journal of Management Studies, 59(3), 755–781. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12783
  • Wanderley, S., & Barros, A. (2019). Decoloniality, geopolitics of knowledge and historic turn: Towards a Latin American agenda. Management & Organizational History, 14(1), 79–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2018.1431551


Amon Barros is an Associate Professor of Organization Studies at FGV EAESP, São Paulo, Brazil. His research focuses on the impacts of business on societies and on the history of management and organizations. He is co-editor-in-chief of 'Management and Organizational History' and of 'Cadernos Ebape.BR'. He is also an associate editor of 'Management Learning'. His work has been published in 'Academy of Management Learning and Education', 'Management Learning', 'Business History', 'Management and Organizational History', and 'Human Relations'.
Hamid Foroughi is an Associate Professor in Responsible Management at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick United Kingdom. His research examines collective memory from political and strategic perspectives, exploring how organizational legacy and collective memory can serve as assets and investigating the politics of memory in relation to authenticity, inclusivity, and ethics. His work has been published in the 'Academy of Management Annals', 'Journal of Management Studies', 'Academy of Management Learning and Education', 'Organization Studies', and 'Journal of World Business'.
Gabrielle Durepos is Professor of Organisation Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax, Canada). She is co-author of ANTi-History: Theorizing the Past, History, and Historiography in Management and Organization Studies and Archival Research in Historical Organisation Studies: Theorising Silences. Her publications appear in 'Management & Organizational History', 'Journal of Management History', 'Business History, and Organization'. She is co-editor-in-chief of 'Management & Organizational History'.