Rhetorical History as Institutional Work
Date
2023
Authors
Suddaby, Roy
Israelsen, Trevor
Bastien, Francois
Saylors, Rohny
Coraiola, Diego
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Management Studies
Abstract
Rhetorical history has emerged as a useful theoretical construct that bridges the long recognized gap between historical and organizational scholarship. Despite its growing popularity, the precise nature of rhetorical history as a construct, its scope conditions, and its utility in resolving critical issues in historical organizational analysis remains unclear. This paper addresses these issues. We define rhetorical history and contextualize the construct by elaborating its relationship to associated concepts like collective memory, rhetoric, and narrative. We ground the construct by reviewing literature that has applied rhetorical history in both theory and empirical research. Our inductive review identifies four recurring themes in which rhetorical history is used to construct perceptions of; (a) continuity and discontinuity, (b) similarity and difference, (c) winners and losers, and (d) morality and immorality. We conclude with a discussion of how rhetorical history is an essential mechanism of institutional work.
Description
Keywords
rhetorical history, collective memory, institutional work, social-symbolic resources, history
Citation
Suddaby, R., et. al. (2023). Rhetorical History as Institutional Work, Journal of Management Studies, 60(1), 242-27. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12860.