Speaker: Professor Roy Suddaby
Date: 4th of November 2021
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Abstract
I introduce and elaborate the construct of rhetorical history in management and organisations studies. Just as modern nation states have developed a sophisticated capacity to manage history, many corporations, foundations and other highly institutionalized organisations are becoming increasingly skilled in their deployment of rhetorical history. These organisations use stories about the past to pursue objectives such as 1) change, 2) identification, 3) strategy and 4) morality. I explain the foundational assumptions of rhetorical history, survey the extant research on each of these four uses of history and explore where, who, how and why rhetorical history is critical to our understanding of organisations and management. I conclude by noting that while much of modern historiography has been organized by the nation state, growing indicia suggest that corporations are the new stewards of historiography which see history not only as a source for truth but also as a social-symbolic resource for the pursuit of organizational goals.
Subjects: Rhetorical history, collective memory, narrative, myth, social-symbolic resources
Biography
Roy Suddaby is the Winspear Chair of Management at the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, Canada and Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Carson College of Business at Washington State University, USA. Professor Suddaby is an internationally regarded scholar of organisational theory and institutional change. His work has contributed to our understanding of the critical role of symbolic resources – legitimacy, Page 2 authenticity, identity and history – in processes of entrepreneurial change and innovation. His current research examines the rhetorical use of the past to mobilize resources for entrepreneurial change.
Roy is a past editor of the Academy of Management Review and is a current associate editor of Academy of Management Perspectives. He is or has been an editorial board member of the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organisation Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and the Journal of Business Venturing. He has won bestpaper awards from the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada as well as the Greif Research Impact Award from the Academy of Management.
Roy was recently named a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a JMI Scholar and an Ascendent Scholar by the Western Academy of Management and a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. Thompson Reuters identified Roy as one of the world’s most highly cited researchers in business and economics in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.