Inventing a past: Corporate heritage as dialectical relationships of past and present

In this commentary, we focus on invented corporate heritage, where organizations present falsified accounts of a corporate past. The extant corporate heritage literature has highlighted how the time frames of the past, present, and future (omni temporality) are merged in those organizations where th...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Marketing theory 2019-06, Vol.19 (2), p.229-234
Main Authors: Brunninge, Olof, Hartmann, Benjamin Julien
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Authenticity
Business Administration
corporate heritage
corporate identity
Economics and Business
Ekonomi och näringsliv
Företagsekonomi
myth
organizational identity
social memory
temporality
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In this commentary, we focus on invented corporate heritage, where organizations present falsified accounts of a corporate past. The extant corporate heritage literature has highlighted how the time frames of the past, present, and future (omni temporality) are merged in those organizations where there is trait constancy. Focusing on invented corporate heritage, we argue that this represents an extreme case of these dialectics, where present and future precede “the past,” or more appropriately “invented past.” Although lacking in authenticity, an invented corporate heritage may still be attractive to consumers since it can construct an aura of authenticity by delivering an enchanting experience to consumers, irrespective of its substantive genuineness. However, such inventions carry considerable risk since they represent a fabrication of the past.
ISSN:1470-5931
1741-301X
1741-301X
DOI:10.1177/1470593118790625