What Links the Chain: An Essay on Organizational Remembering as Practice

Abstract

In this essay, we review, critique, and reconceptualize organization theory’s understanding of organizational memory. We find that organization theorists have underestimated the historicity of memory, its associative character, and social-psychological constitution. The critical impetus of the literature review translates in the body of the paper into an alternative perspective that posits organizational remembering as a collective, historically and culturally situated practice rather than as an object of cognition. Remembering is considered crucial to maintaining a sense of continuity and shared identity in organizations by actively constructing meaning. Our conceptualization of remembering focuses on the ‘softer’ qualities of the process such as culture, tradition, the person, emotion, and forgetting that traditionally were neglected or oversimplified in organization studies. Finally, we explore how a critical approach to the study of organizational remembering gives voice to socially contested issues such as power, morality, and reflexivity.