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Coraiola, Diego M.; Mena, Sébastien; Maclean, Mairi; Suddaby, Roy; Muzio, Daniel
doi: 10.1111/joms.70030pmid: N/A
This article introduces the special issue on occupations and memory in organizations. To foster increasing collaboration from scholars from both fields, we offer a general argument connecting memory and occupations on two levels. At the societal level, we show how memory experts, such as historians, archivists, and museologists, have played a fundamental role in the development of modernity and the emergence of our contemporary historical consciousness. At the occupational level, we argue that occupations are transgenerational communities maintained through various practices and technologies of memory whose legitimacy and professional status increasingly depend on their ability to cultivate both practical and historical memory. We further explore three related topics covered by the papers from this special issue: expert and memory work, occupational and mnemonic communities, and professional and mnemonic projects. At the end, we identify three promising themes for future research: the negotiation of boundaries and resources among communities; the interaction between technology, expertise, and memory; and the occupational ethics and responsibility towards past actions and memories.
Aroles, Jeremy; Morrell, Kevin; Granter, Edward; Liang, Yin
doi: 10.1111/joms.13059pmid: N/A
Though it is widely understood that the past can be an important resource for organizations, less is known about the micro‐level skills and choices that help to materialize different representations of the past. We understand these micro‐level skills and choices as a practice: ‘memory work’ – a banner term gathering various activities that provide the scaffolding for a shared past. Seeking to learn from a context where memory work is central, we share insights from a quasi‐longitudinal study of UK museum employees. We theorize three ideal‐typic regimes of memory work, namely representing, re‐presenting and producing the past, and detail the micro‐practices through which these regimes are enacted. Through explaining the key features of memory work in this context, our paper offers novel, broader insights into the relationship between occupations and memory work, showing how occupations differ in their understanding of memory and how this shapes their memory work.
doi: 10.1111/joms.13135pmid: N/A
Memory work involves mnemonic practices such as remembering, forgetting, and enactment of the past to address past wrongdoing, foster future action, and contribute to a sense of belonging. Working with diversity and plurality of memories, however, necessitates confronting the underlying politico‐ethical considerations and struggles when memory work transcends organizational bounds. This study focuses on the viewpoints of memory workers in communities in order to theorize the various possibilities and limitations of memory work as such. In this work, the politico‐ethical tensions are evident between the requirements of practicing an occupation and those of the communities, who in turn exhibit hierarchies, conflicts, and diversity within and between themselves. I suggest that taking a community‐centric approach to memory work can serve the dynamic integrity of memories, and foster community engagement and empowerment. Memory workers, then, can account for the politico‐ethical struggles over memories by orchestrating interpretive, open, and embodied mnemonic practices to remain in tune with the diverse, disputed, polyvocal, and ever‐unfolding memories. The contributions of this paper carry implications for a more pluralistic and dynamic approach to memory work, suited to our times marked by increased historical consciousness, rival memories, and fierce debates over what and how must be remembered.
Foroughi, Hamid; Eisenman, Micki; Parsley, Samantha
doi: 10.1111/joms.13086pmid: N/A
We show how technology and its temporal instantiations act as material‐relational mnemonic devices that provide temporal anchors for collective remembering in occupations and form the basis of what we call an 'occupational mnemonic community'. This is important because how the past is remembered shapes politics, the definition of membership and boundaries within occupations. Empirically, we focus on the occupation of DJing, an occupation that has witnessed major technological transformation. Utilizing interviews, archival research, and auto‐ethnographic data, we show how DJs’ engagement with material mnemonic devices, here, DJing technology, aligns group members’ interpretations of the past, and forms the basis of an ‘occupational mnemonic community’. In our analysis, we uncover that imagined perceptions regarding how existing group members assess the material choices of newcomers, as well as, the performative behaviours exhibiting these choices, play pivotal roles in sustaining mnemonic communities. We conclude with a discussion on occupational mnemonic processes and their effect on establishing boundaries within occupations. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the sociomaterial aspects of collective memory and its significance in understanding the politics of memory in work communities and organizations.
Azambuja, Ricardo; Baudot, Lisa; Matsubara, Saori; Endo, Takahiro; Wallace, Dana
doi: 10.1111/joms.13147pmid: N/A
Existing scholarship documents how, in becoming a professional, such as a partner in a professional services firm (PSF), one's habitus comes into alignment with field expectations. Less understood, however, is what happens to habitus and, relatedly, to professionals' accumulated cultural, social, and economic capitals, as individuals ‘unbecome’ a professional and transition away from the field. We examine this overlooked phenomenon via individual and focus group interviews with partners retired from PSFs in Japan and the USA. We find that, in unbecoming a professional, aspects of ex‐partners' habitus may be misaligned with the field they operate in, prompting a hysteresis effect. The lack of fit of habitus with one's current circumstances is induced by ex‐partners' nostalgia regarding accumulated capitals, that is, wistful memories capable of structuring present and future actions. By demonstrating how nostalgia informs ex‐partners' experience of the hysteresis effect, this paper contributes to understandings of the importance of memory when detaching from one's profession. Furthermore, given that our investigation is carried out across two distinct cultural settings, we also theorize how country‐specific historical work arrangements may condition memory in professionals' unbecoming from PSFs.
Currie, Graeme; Wild, Andrew; Lockett, Andy
doi: 10.1111/joms.13129pmid: N/A
We draw on the historical case of the UK pharmacy industry from 1880–1905 to examine how, in the face of a competitive threat to their survival, lower status professionals seek to reinvigorate the memory of their role in providing community service in the public interest. Derived from this, our study reveals how mnemonic work has a nuanced nature in professionalized settings. First, lower status actors enact certain types of mnemonic work because they need to maintain professional purity. Second, to maintain professional purity, lower status professionals also need to carefully sequence their mnemonic work and pay particular attention to the social context within which they are seeking to manipulate collective memory. Our study also shows how, within such a sequencing, for lower status professionals to successfully enact mnemonic work, they need to collectively mobilize their ranks and may engage in entryism to professional bodies dominated by their higher status peers.
Noh, Sung‐Chul; Lyle, Matthew C. B.; Do, Boram
doi: 10.1111/joms.13146pmid: N/A
While scholars have studied coordination across occupational lines, they have yet to theorize how the memories held by those involved in such coordination might influence it. In this paper, we frame occupational groups as mnemonic communities – collectives for whom a shared understanding of the past constitutes their character – to explore the role of memory in cross‐occupational coordination (COC). Through qualitative analysis of a South Korean broadcasting company in which COC emerged for the purpose of collective action, we develop a theory of cross‐occupational mnemonic (dis)unity. Our findings suggest that, initially, cross‐occupational relational memories (i.e., memories occupations held of themselves, other occupations and their relationships) constrained COC as they maintained occupational divides. However, one occupation's efforts to downplay these memories, coupled with an event experienced and remembered across occupational lines, resulted in COC by producing a cross‐occupational mnemonic community. These findings extend research at the intersection of occupations and memory by theorizing the mutability of occupational groups, perhaps the most prominent intra‐organizational mnemonic communities.
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