HISTORY, SOCIETY, AND INSTITUTIONS: THE ROLE OF …€¦ · the prevailing ideal-typical approach. Third, we propose and discuss several sources of historical discontinuity in collective

Q Academy of Management Review2016, Vol. 41, No. 4, 676–699.http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0183

HISTORY, SOCIETY, AND INSTITUTIONS: THE ROLE OFCOLLECTIVE MEMORY IN THE EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION

OF SOCIETAL LOGICS

WILLIAM OCASIOMICHAEL MAUSKAPF

Northwestern University

CHRISTOPHER W. J. STEELEUniversity of Alberta

We examine the role of history in organization studies by theorizing how collectivememoryshapes societal institutions and the logics that govern them. We propose that, rather thantranshistorical ideal types, societal logics are historically constituted cultural structuresgenerated through the collectivememory of historical events.We then develop a theoreticalmodel to explain how the representation, storage, and retrieval of collectivememory lead tothe emergence of societal logics. In turn, societal logics shape memory making and thereproduction and reconstruction of history itself. To illustrate our theory, we discuss the riseof the corporate logic in the United States. We identify two sources of discontinuity that candisrupt this memory-making process and create notable disjunctures in the evolution ofsocietal logics. We conclude by discussing how changes in collective memory and thehistorical trajectory of societal logics shape organizational forms and practices.

History plays a critically important but oftenunderspecified role in the lives of institutions, or-ganizations, and their members. Since at least the1990s, scholars have advocated that theories of or-ganization take history more seriously (Clark &Rowlinson, 2004; Keiser, 1994; Zald, 1993). Yet a the-oretical and methodological divide persists be-tween those who study organizations and thosewho study history. According to historian and po-litical scientist William Sewell, Jr.’s Logics of His-tory, there isa logical explanation for this condition:

While historians do not think of themselves astheorists, they know something social scientists donot: how to think about the temporalities of sociallife. On the other hand, while social scientists’treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, theirtheoretical sophistication and penchant for struc-tural accounts of social life could offer much tohistorians (Sewell, 2005: back cover).

Is there any hope of bridging these worlds toprovide a dynamic integration of structural andhistorical accounts of organizational life?Ouranswer to thisquestionisanunequivocalyes.

Although many organizational theories are implic-itly ahistorical or reduce history to a temporal vari-able, some contain the raw materials to acquire anexplicitly historical lens (Kipping & Usdiken, 2014;Rowlinson, Hassard, & Decker, 2014). Institutionaltheory seems particularly well suited to this task(Suddaby, Foster, & Mills, 2014). Yet while researchacross the social sciences may recognize that his-tory operates through institutions to constitute thesocialworld (Mahoney& Thelen, 2007; Thelen, 1999),the details of this argument and its consequencesremain underdeveloped (Kipping & Usdiken, 2014).We further the integration of history and orga-

nization studies by theorizing how the processof collective memory making shapes our un-derstanding of historical events and societalinstitutions. To accomplish this, we employand extend the institutional logics perspective(Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton, Ocasio, &Lounsbury, 2012), which contends that organiza-tions and their activities are embedded in histor-ically situatedwebs ofmeaning and significance.These webs are structured by institutional logics—sets of organizing principles that provide actors

All authors contributed equally to this article. We thankMichael Rowlinson and two anonymous reviewers, whosedetailed comments and suggestions made the paper better.We also thank Royston Greenwood and the participants of the2014 EGOS track on “Rethinking Responses to InstitutionalComplexity” for their constructive feedback on an earlier ver-sion of the manuscript. Finally, we thank the editorial team ofthe Special Topic Forum on History and Organization Studiesfor their leadership andadvocacy of an organizational sciencethat takes history seriously.

676Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyrightholder’s express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0183

with vocabularies of motive and practice. Al-though scholars have explored the historicalcontingencies of field-level logics and theirimplications for organizational practices andforms (Haveman&Rao, 1997; Scott, Ruef,Mendel,&Caronna, 2000; Thornton&Ocasio, 1999), theyhavelargely ignored the historicity of societal logics.While the historical provenance of societal logicsiswidely acknowledged, theyaremostly theorizedas Weberian ideal types—that is, transhistoricalgeneralizations of abstract principles (Thorntonet al., 2012). For example, when institutionalscholars study the overarching principles thatstructure our understanding of “the market” or“the corporation,” they rarely explore how thesesocietal logics emerge or change over time (cf.Lipartito & Sicilia, 2004; Polanyi, 1944). Here weacknowledge not only that societal logics have“specific historical limits” (Friedland & Alford,1991: 249) but that they also provide a new theorydetailing history’s role in the generation, re-production, and transformation of societal logics.

In contrast to the ideal-typical approach, wepropose that societal logics are historically con-stituted cultural structures generated throughcollectivememorymaking. Field-level logics tendto emerge from the shared experiences of inter-connected groups of actors, but the origin of so-cietal logics hasnot beenadequately theorized. Inlarge, complex societies, individuals are often toowidely dispersed, and their local contexts toodisparate, to shareuniversal experiences (Durkheim,1964). Absent the common ground of shared expe-rience, we propose that collective memory suppliesindividuals and organizations with the informa-tion and schemas required to effectively navigatesociety and social life. Collective memory, as asystemof values, identities, andpractices shapingthe commemoration and (re)interpretation of his-torical events (Schwartz, 2005; Schwartz & Kim,2002), serves a constitutive role in the emergenceand evolution of societal logics. In turn, societallogics provide a historical lens through whichmemory and history are recursively shaped,reproduced, and reconstructed.

After unpacking this argument and situating itwithin existing research on institutional logicsand collective memory, we divide the remainderof the article into three parts. First, we developa new process model that posits societal logicsas emerging from collective memory making ofhistorical events. We begin by discussing therepresentation and documentation of localized

occurrences. Then we examine how these as-sorted documents are arranged and storedwithinarchives. Patterns in the retrieval of documentsfrom these archives give rise to historicalevents—episodes of societal significance that aresimilarly identified, if differently interpreted, bythe dispersed actors in society. As the memory ofhistorical events develops and is reinforced (orreinterpreted), metanarratives emerge to helpimpose order on the past and present.When thesemetanarratives converge and stabilize, theygenerate societal logics, which, in turn, shape thememory-making process.Second, we provide an illustration of our model

with reference to the emergence and evolution ofthe corporate logic in the United States, shapedby the collective memory making of historicalevents. In the process, we contrast our historicallyembedded explanation of the corporate logicwiththe prevailing ideal-typical approach.Third, we propose and discuss several sources

of historical discontinuity in collective memorymaking. We highlight two sources of discontinu-ity inparticular: (1) theconfluenceof eventsacrossinstitutional fields (e.g., series of events that cometo be seen as watershed moments or as phasetransitions in the evolution of society) and (2)changes in the communicative infrastructure(e.g., the complex of technologies and practicesthrough which collective memory making takesplace).We conclude the article by discussing howour model might inspire a more historically in-formed approach to institutional logics and pro-posing implications for the study of organizationsand organizational theory more broadly.

HISTORY, INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS, ANDCOLLECTIVE MEMORY

History, which for our purposes refers both tothe accumulation of past events and to the docu-ments, narratives, and memories attached tothem, has enjoyed a renaissance in organiza-tional studies since the linguistic and culturalturns of the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, most ofour discipline’s theories remain relatively ahis-torical (Kipping & Usdiken, 2014). This state of af-fairs reflects a more general epistemologicaldivide between social science and history(Rowlinson et al., 2014). In the words of HaydenWhite (2010: 192), historians “deal in ‘concrete’reality rather than ‘abstractions’; their interestis in discovering the true story behind the events

2016 677Ocasio, Mauskapf, and Steele

reported in the documents and telling that storywell,” rather than in generating universal claims.White (1973) nonetheless argued that maintaininga strict separation between the “factual” sciencesand interpretive history is unnecessary and ulti-mately unproductive. A flurry of recent research inorganization theory has begun to take White’scredoseriously (Booth&Rowlinson,2006;Bucheli&Wadhwani, 2014; Greenwood & Bernardi, 2014;Rowlinson et al., 2014), and we follow in this tra-dition as we develop a more historical account ofinstitutional logics and their consequences.

The institutional logics perspective maintainsthat social life is organized into distinctive arenasor domains of activity that are characterizedby particular logics or principles of organization(Friedland & Alford, 1991). Logics provide actorswith a more or less cohesive set of assumptions,rules, and beliefs to help them make sense of theworld, orient themselves toward others, and ac-count for their behavior. Logicsmaysometimesbefollowed automatically but are frequently subjectto mindful reflection and mobilization (Thorntonet al., 2012). They provide people with culturalresources that can be used to shape collectiveidentities and practices (Pouthier, Steele, &Ocasio, 2013; Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003), to es-tablish and legitimate organizational cultures(Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Kraatz, 2009), and topursue or resist organizational change (Gawer &Phillips, 2013; Lok, 2010). Indeed, individuals mayhave different relationships with available logics,identifying with some and making use of them tosignal affiliations or solve problems while activelyresisting others (Creed, DeJordy, & Lok, 2010;Kellogg, 2011; Lok, 2010). Similarly, at the organiza-tional level, logics provide resources for sharedsensemaking, symbolic management, and thecrafting of identity (Glynn, 2000; Greenwood,Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta, & Lounsbury, 2011;Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Dominant logicsconstrain the organizational forms that are con-sidered legitimatewithinagivendomain (Haveman& Rao, 1997), while other available logics providealternative templates that can be used to developand legitimate new forms and innovations (Tracey,Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011), ultimately shaping organi-zational ecologies.

Societal Logics As Historical Formations

Much of the research on logics focuses on tempo-ral shifts in dominant logics and their consequences

for particular institutional fields, such as highereducation publishing (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999),French cuisine (Rao et al., 2003), and theU.S. pharmaceutical industry (Goodrick & Reay,2011). Shifts in field-level logics can lead to out-comes at other levels of analysis as well, in-cluding the evolution of organizational forms(Haveman & Rao, 1997) and the possibility ofintraorganizational conflict (Dunn & Jones, 2010;Murray, 2010). This work has tended to view his-tory primarily as a scope condition or forcingvariable, rendering local institutions and orga-nizations historically contingent (Thornton &Ocasio, 1999). We suggest that a more completeintegration of history and the logics perspectiverequires engagement with the historicity of logics,particularly the far-reaching societal logicswithin which field logics are nested. Historicizingthese logics and their configurations across in-stitutional orders can enhance our ability to studyand understand the historical trajectory of institu-tions and their organizational- and individual-level effects (Hatch & Zilber, 2012; Schwartz &Kim, 2002).As already discussed, societal logics serve as

the organizing principles for distinct domains ofsocial activity. In extant theoretical and empiricalresearch, scholars have identified seven distinctsocietal logics, although there may be others.These include (Thornton et al., 2012) the family(defined by unconditional loyalty to blood re-lations and other family members), religion (thesacredness and profanity of certain activities,things, and actors), the state (democratic partici-pation), the market (pursuit of profit and shareprice), professions (personal and certified exper-tise), community (trust and reciprocity), and thecorporation (rationalized bureaucracy and thepursuit of market power).Each of these societal logics is often conceptu-

alized as a transhistorical ideal type that appearsfixed over time. We argue instead that theselogics are historically constituted through collec-tive memory. Whereas field-level logics may begrounded in the shared experiences and historiesof local actors, societal logics address a broaderand more dispersed set of individuals whoare unlikely to share many experiences. This hastwo key implications. First, we argue that thepower of societal logics rests on the creation ofexperiences that can be shared by nonparticipants.Collective memory supplies people with the medi-ated “experience” needed to navigate different

678 OctoberAcademy of Management Review

institutional orders and the logics that organizethem.

Second, societal logics operate differently thanfield-level logics as a result of their unique formand content. Like field-level logics, societal logicsshape cognition, behavior, and organizationwithin a specific jurisdiction (e.g., within “thefamily”). In addition, however, we propose thatsocietal logics provide foundational principlesthat can be used in the creation, maintenance,and disruption of more situated field-level logics.They allow reflective actors to evaluate more lo-calized logics through the invocation of broad,well-recognized principles that cut across fieldsand permeate society. Thus, societal logics influ-ence organizational and individual cognition andaction across a wide range of fields. Moreover,they provide widely understood principles thatcan be used to guide and justify behavior when-ever field-level logics break down. The influenceof societal logics on organizations and in-dividuals is often filtered through field-levellogics; however, societal logics also have a di-rect effect in times of reflection and disruption. Inboth respects, their impact cuts across fields andinfluences broad swaths of social life at any giventime. Thus, understanding how societal logics areconstituted through collective memory aids our un-derstanding of how individual-, organizational-,and field-level phenomena vary across histor-ical periods.

Collective Memory

Indebted to thework of Emile Durkheim and hisstudent Maurice Halbwachs, contemporary col-lective memory research is at once rich in con-ceptual depth and inconsistent in definitionalclarity (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011).Most sociologists frame collective memory asa process that is defined through the act of re-membrance or commemoration (Boje, 2008), butothers entertain the possibility that memory isa thing that can be stored, retrieved, and forgotten(Fine & Beim, 2007; Walsh & Ungson, 1991). Herewe follow sociologist and memory scholar JeffreyOlick,whodefines collectivememory as “both themedium and the outcome of social configura-tions” (2007: 118). While memorymay be activatedthrough the act of commemoration, we suggestthat certain sociomaterial traces of memory(e.g., documents) remain stored inarchives,wherethey serve as important touchstones for future

retrieval and reinterpretation. For the sake ofclarity, we refer to the production, arrangement,and consumption of such traces as collective mem-ory making, a process that produces the contentof collective memory and shapes the configura-tion of societal logics.Of course, the means by which collective

memories are made is also a topic of debate inhistory, sociology, and management. For mostscholars collective memory refers to group com-memorations of the past, but others use the terminterchangeably (with collected memory) to referto the aggregation of individual memories (Olick,1999). While it may be true that only individualspossess the capacity to contemplate the past(Gedi & Elam, 1996), this does not mean thatbeliefs originate in the individual or can beexplainedon thebasis of personal or immediatelyshared experiences alone. Much of what we re-member reflects our indirect experience as mem-bers of particular groups, institutions, or “mnemoniccommunities” (Halbwachs, 1992; Zerubavel, 1996).Thus, collective memory making is not just a cog-nitive process but a social one, generated throughcommunication and dynamic patterns of interac-tion (Casey & Olivera, 2011; Cuc, Ozuru, Manier, &Hirst, 2006) and stored in material artifacts andcollective consciousness (Fine & Beim, 2007).Rather than a purely cognitive model, our versionof collectivememory is embodied in symbolic andmaterial documents (e.g., languageand linguisticcategories). These documents are then catalogued,stored, and sometimes retrieved to reconstructthe past and situate the present.Almost inevitably, collective memory is rooted

not only in the desire to document past events butalso in the desire to make sense of the presentthrough the interpretation and commemoration ofthe past (Casey & Olivera, 2011; Schwartz, 1996,2000), both of which are critical aspects of “his-tory.” Although collective memories may referto real events—and be attached to real ob-jects that serve as important touchstones forremembrance and (re)interpretation—they aremultiple, dynamic, and under continuous re-vision (Boje, 2008). Different interpretations ofthe past vie for attention to enter and poten-tially alter prevailing collective memories, andthe outcome of such meaning tournamentshas concrete social and organizational conse-quences (e.g., Anteby & Molnar, 2012; Nissley &Casey, 2002). Research by psychologist BarrySchwartz and others highlights this point: the


past is continually reinterpreted to fit the changinglandscape of the present and, we would add, toshape the social construction of the future (Cook,2007). Collective memory’s dual identity as a rep-resentation of the past and a tool for the remaking(or forgetting) of the past implies a contradictionof sorts, arising from its deeply reflexive andhistorical roots. Schwartz addresses this paradoxvis-a-vis collective memory’s role as a model ofand for society:

As a model of society, collective memory reflectspast events in terms of the needs, interests, fears,and aspirations of the present. As a model for so-ciety, collective memory performs two functions: itembodies a template that organizes and animatesbehavior and a frame within which people locateand find meaning for the present experience. Col-lective memory affects social reality by reflecting,shaping, and framing it. . . . Thedistinctionbetweenmemoryasamodel of andamodel for social realityis an analytic, not an empirical, one: both aspectsare realized in everyact of remembrance (2000: 301).

Just as society shapes our attention toward cer-tain memories in the present, it also constrainsour ability to reach into the past (Zerubavel, 1996)and imagine the future (Cook, 2007).

Our treatment of collective memory making asa social phenomenon involving the representation,storage, and retrieval of documents is informed byworkonorganizationalmemoryaswell.WalshandUngson’s (1991) foundational article in this journalpresents organizational memory as a three-partsequential process. In their model, information is

acquired from the external environment, retainedacross several retention facilities (e.g., includingthe minds of individuals; the culture, structure,practices, and ecology of the organization; andexternal archives), and then retrieved (auto-matically or consciously) to aid organizationalmembers in the learning process. Although thisconception fails to account for the experiential andhistorically specific nature of collective memory(Rowlinson, Booth, Clark, Delahaye, & Procter,2010), it provides a helpful set of tools for anal-ysis, much like the work on the manifestationand interpretation of organizational culture(Hatch, 1993).

A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDINGCOLLECTIVE MEMORY MAKING

In this section we develop a model to show howsocietal logics emerge and evolve through the col-lective memory-making process. We present ourframework in the form of a recursive processmodel,depicted in Figure 1. For ease of understanding,we summarize definitions of key concepts andmechanisms in Table 1 and Table 2.Our primaryobjective here is to explain (1) how thehistoricalaccumulation of occurrences, events, and theiraffiliated documents constitute societal logicsand (2) the means by which these logics shapethe memory-making process. This approach isconsistent with the “historical institutionalist”perspective in political science and sociology,

FIGURE 1Collective Memory Making and the Historical Evolution of Societal Logics

Storage

Key: moderating relationship

Archives

Retrieval

OccurrencesRepresentation Representation

Documents Historicalevents

Meta -

Societallogics

narration


where institutions are viewed as “outcomes of pastevents and interpretations of those events” (Suddabyet al., 2014: 111) that endogenously emerge fromand gain meaning through a series of complexhistorical processes (Mahoney & Thelen; 2007;Schneiberg, 2007; Thelen, 1999). Furthermore,while our model focuses on the societal level, italso highlights the nested and cross-level natureof collective memory making, noting the criticalroles of microlevel occurrences and localizedstructures in this process, as well the conse-quences of collective memory for changes inorganizational behavior and culture (Schultz,2012; Zilber, 2012).

We acknowledge that analytical models of thissort often necessitate simplifications of dynamicphenomena. History is messy and nonlinear ina way that is difficult to capture within the con-fines of suchamodel, not least becausememories

vary widely in their interpretation and deploy-ment, both over time and across peoples. Despitethese challenges, however, we believe it is usefulto present our argument in the form of a cyclicalprocess model. Developing constructs with dis-crete interrelationships can be an effective heu-ristic to build and test theory in institutionalanalysis. We address how historical disconti-nuities and crisis can disrupt the evolutionaryprocess suggested by our model toward the endof the article, but we begin by describing eachstep in this process.

Occurrences

We propose that the documents and storiesfrom which history is constructed, reproduced,and challenged are generated through mundaneoccurrences or lived experiences. During the

TABLE 1Core Concepts in the Historical Formation of Societal Logics

Concept Definition

Occurrences The everyday lived experience of an individual or group. Occurrences are scale free in terms ofparticipation and duration (i.e., they may involve few or many actors and last moments or years).

Documents Durable or replicable artifacts that serve as sociomaterial representations of past occurrences. Thesemay include texts, account sheets, historical treatises, memorized oral histories, or memorabilia ofvarious sizes and significance.

Archives Collections of documents ordered according to a cultural system of classification, as materializedthrough specific technologies and practices. Archives categorize and catalogue documents, distributethem across various repositories, and shape the conditions of their retrieval.

Historical events Episodes of societal significance that are constructed through the repeated retrieval of availabledocuments. These represent more or less shared and stable understandings of the periodization of thepast, but not necessarily its meaning or implication.

Societal logics Setsof organizingprinciples that explainhowagivendomainof social lifeworksandwhy. Societal logicsemerge from and justify the categorizations imposed in field-level archives. A societal logic solidifieswhen these categorization schemes begin to converge across domains of social activity.

TABLE 2Core Processes in the Historical Formation of Societal Logics

Mechanism Definition

Representation Any attempt to capture some details of an occurrence in a manner that can “re-present” it in the future—forexample, via texts, narrative accounts, or other sociomaterial artifacts.

Storage The process bywhich documents are (1) granted relevance or significance, (2) catalogued as being of one kindor another, and (3) archived and made (more or less) available for future retrieval.

Retrieval The use of documents tomake sense of the past or to defend or attack existing interpretations or histories. Thismay involve the physical retrieval of documents or mere reference to documents that are believed to exist.

Metanarration Accounts of social life that attempt to impose order on the past and its documentation. This involves (1)explaining the organization of archives by projecting cultural categories and domains onto the world “outthere” and (2) explaining how events fit together by positing organizing principles for those domains.Convergence in metanarrations (re)produces societal logics.


course of everyday life, individuals, groups,and organizations notice and bracket particularaspects of experience (whether their own or thoseof others), forging them into distinguishable epi-sodes that can be attended to and analyzed sep-arately (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). It isthis bracketing and bounding that defines an oc-currence, rather than the phenomenon itself: thus,a meal can be an occurrence, but so too cana strike, an election, a battle, or even a war. Oncethey have been cognitively bounded and labeled,occurrences provide “the common currency forcommunicational exchanges” (Chia, 2000: 517),making it possible for individuals and organiza-tions to communicate and make sense of theirexperiences.

Consider a juridical meeting. In isolation,such a meeting is not distinct from the flow ofindividual experience; sensations of sound,heat, comfort, and discomfort continue, and ev-eryday life goes on. Because individuals at-tend to and bracket particular aspects of themeeting—for example, the fact and the content ofconversation—themeeting takes on a coherence ofits own and becomes a shared experience. More-over, this experience can be referenced and dis-cussed by people who did not participate in themeeting at all but who share some common un-derstanding of the episode’s boundaries and sig-nificance. Organizations play an important rolehere, both by structuring occurrences and byshaping individuals’ attention and interpretations(Daft &Weick, 1984; Ocasio, 1997;Weick & Roberts,1993).

Note that occurrences exist outside of the col-lective memory “loop” represented in Figure 1.In our model occurrences are an input to thecollective memory-making process, since theyare not subject to reinterpretation at the levelof society, except insofar as they are latertransformed into historical events. Only oc-currences that are so transformed have suffi-cient significance to be commemorated andreinterpreted widely (Schwartz, 2005). In thissense occurrences influence collective memorymaking by serving as the essential raw materialfor documents and the definition of historicalevents.

Representation

To effectively enter collective memory, occur-rences must first be meaningfully represented

in some durable or replicable manner. The pro-cess of representation refers to themanifestation(Hatch, 1993) and transcription of contemporaryoccurrences into documents of one sort or an-other. It is often during this process that storiesbegin to emerge (Boje, 2008). Individuals workto connect occurrences, introduce causal con-nections and themes, and define actors andplots, helping them make sense of their pastsandorient themselves toward the future (Tsoukas,2005; Weick et al., 2005). People may engagein this process alone, but representation isgenerally a collective endeavor whereby in-dividuals propose tentative accounts to oneanother so that they can be confirmed, chal-lenged, or elaborated (Weick et al., 2005; Zilber,2007). Indeed, there is often a preemptive andeditorial element to representation, with au-thors guided toward representations thatare likely to be well-received and easily un-derstood. Thus, the process of representation isforward looking, even as it concerns itself withthe past.Some representation processes are largely

routine affairs whereby occurrences aredocumented as part of the work at hand, as inthe case of administrative documents (Garfinkel,1967; Wenger, 1998) or diaries. Other occur-rences, however, are represented because theycaptured the attention of outside audiences(Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988; Hoffman & Ocasio,2001). There are various reasons why an oc-currence might attract widespread attention.Prior research suggests that an occurrence ismore likely to be extensively represented andstored if it is promoted by a dominant narratoror editor, if it appears to connect with centralsocietal strains or tensions, or if it can be easilylinked to an existing category of comparableevents (Cuc et al., 2006; Fine, 1997, 2007). Al-ternatively, an occurrence might attract atten-tion because it resonateswith a large audience ofnonparticipants or because it seems unexpectedor strange, demanding some response or reactionfrom those who hear about it (Hoffman & Ocasio,2001; Schudson, 1989).

Documents

In our model the concept of documents isintended to capture the primary role of collectiveobjects in the memory-making process (Fine &Beim, 2007). Following research in documentary


and information sciences (Buckland, 1991; Lund,2009; Olsen, Lund, Ellingsen, & Hartvigsen, 2012),we define a document as “any concrete or sym-bolic indication, preserved or recorded, forreconstructing or proving a phenomenon,” suchas a past occurrence (Briet, 2006/1951, as trans-lated by Buckland, 1991: 354). This definition en-compasses a broad array of artifacts, includingtexts, audio and video recordings, formal oralaccounts, memorabilia, and memorials, amongothers. Across these forms, multiple documentswill often provide conflicting accounts of the past,thus providing a critical space and resource forcollective memory making (and remaking). Notethat documents are generated not only throughthe representation of contemporary occurrencesbut also through the representation (and re-interpretation) of historical events. Bothprocessesproduce new documents that enter collectivememory, shaping our understandings of the past,present, and future.

Storage

While some scholars have emphasized therole of remembrance and commemoration inthe constitution of collectivememory (Schwartz,2000, 2005), others have argued that storageplays an important role in its conservationand reproduction (Fine & Beim, 2007; Walsh &Ungson, 1991). From our perspective, memoriesmay be activated through individual acts ofremembrance, but documents shape, legitimate,and even trigger this process. Not all documentsremain available for collective memory mak-ing, however; they must first be effectivelystored.

The process of storage is threefold. First, stor-age involves retaining certain documents for fu-ture reference, thereby transforming localizedrepresentations into enduring resources forshared memory making. This may involve a pro-cess of formal publication or recognition, or itmay bemore informal, perhaps requiring only theclick of a button depending on the technologicaland social context (e.g., the communicative in-frastructure). Second, storage encompasses thecataloguing of documents—their assignment tosome repository, their indexing, and their orga-nization according to period or theme. Finally,storage entails the maintenance of documentswith some degree of retrievability, although notall stored documents remain easily retrievable.

They may be lost, forgotten, or even destroyed,especially if they are not obviously connected tomatters of practical or cultural significance. Thedynamics of storage are contingent on a variety offactors, including the influence of professionalgatekeepers (such as archivists and historians),prevailing interests (Wry, Cobb, & Aldrich, 2013),ideologies (Lukes, 2005) and logics (Thorntonet al., 2012), and the rhetorical appeal of the rep-resentations in question (Schudson, 1989). Thesedynamics are the domain of the archives.

Archives

In essence, archives are collections of docu-ments that have been organized according tosome system of classification—a system thatneed not be explicit or particularly precise. Be-yond this point, definitions of archives varywidely (Manoff, 2004; Zeitlyn, 2012). Some defini-tions focus on discrete collections of texts, withdefinite physical locations, whereas others aremore abstract. For example, Foucault envisageda general societal archive responsible for classi-fying and contextualizing all the statementsmade by its members. Rather than any one spe-cific, concrete collection of documents, Foucault’sarchive is a system of principles and technolo-gies, carving out distinct domains of discoursewith their own criteria for relevance, significance,and truth (Foucault, 2002).We integrate these perspectives to define ar-

chives as collections of documents orderedaccording to some cultural system of classifica-tion. The classification structure of an archive (1)determines which documents are to be includedin a given collection, (2) organizes them, (3) con-textualizes themby relating them to each other, (4)stores them in one or more related repositories,and (5) permits and constrains their retrieval.Each of these interrelated processes is shaped byorganizational practices, information technolo-gies, and the politics enveloping archivists andtheir audiences (see, for example, Bowker, 2008;Saxer, 2010; Trace, 2002). This definition encom-passes a variety of collection types, includingpublic libraries and museums, private researchcollections, business archives, and Wikipedia’sdigital database. It also suggests that archivescan exist at very different levels of analysis. Wecan observe organizational archives (Trace, 2002),city archives (De Vivo, 2010), archives of colonialadministrations (Stoler, 2002), and even national


or international archives (Caswell, 2010). For ex-ample, the archive of civil law in theUnited Statesis distributed across a large number of organiza-tions. Taken as a whole, this archive determineswhich types of documents are relevant for estab-lishing legal precedent and which are not, whichdocuments should be taken into account in legalargumentation andwhich should not, which legaldocuments are relevant to specific questions oflaw and which are not, and, ultimately, whichdocuments are to be incorporated into our legalmemory and in what manner.

Our definition is consistent with recent work inanthropology (Zeitlyn, 2012), the history of science(Bowker, 2008), and the archival sciences, wherethe political and cultural qualities of archives arereceiving increasing attention (De Vivo, 2010;Schwartz & Cook, 2002; Stoler, 2002). Critically, italso foregrounds theculturalandpoliticaldynamicsby which documents are contextualized and in-terrelated, emphasizing that archives are notneutral repositories for storage. Operating asa whole, archives influence collective memorymaking by shaping the dynamics of storage, cat-egorization, and retrieval. In terms of storage, ar-chives influence the production of collectivememory by determining which documents serveas the raw materials for memory making. Asprofessional archivists, historians, and othergatekeepers decide which documents are of suf-ficient importance to store, they create the condi-tions for both collective remembering andforgetting (Bowker, 2008; Schwartz & Cook, 2002).Archives also determine where and how selecteddocuments are stored. This affects not only therelative durability and security of documents butalso the possibilities for their retrieval, makingcertain documents available to the general publicand others available only to carefully vetted pro-fessional historians or state officials. Finally,archives structure the process of retrieval by cre-ating new relationships of relevance or irrele-vance (or agreement and disagreement) betweendocuments. The very organization of the archive,in other words, provides an interpretative contextfor those intending to retrieve a given documentand rememberanoccurrenceor event (Schwartz&Cook, 2002).

Retrieval

Thus far, we have explained how historical oc-currences and the documents that represent them

become archived within collective memory. Nev-ertheless, we know that memories become con-sequential through acts of remembrance (whatothers have called “re-presentation”), which shapeindividuals’ post hoc understandings of occur-rencesandinfluence futureactions (e.g., Schwartz&Kim, 2002). We argue that this begins with the re-trieval process, which encompasses the discovery,recollection, and reinterpretation of archived doc-uments, along with the ideas and claims theyrepresent.Retrieval is an everyday activity, often drawing

onanalogies and recollections of the past tomakesense of the present (Weick, 1995). Much of theretrieval process is automatic and noncontrover-sial, but some of it is not. Initial, reevaluative, oriconoclastic retrieval efforts are likely to facechallenges to their legitimacy from competingor entrenched interpretations. As basic under-standings of historical “facts” become acceptedmore broadly, the retrieval process is likely tobecome less conscious and more routine driven,drawing on habit, intuition, and individual mem-ory, rather than the details of specific documents(Kahneman, 2011). “Fact” and “fiction” becomeseparated out (Berger & Luckmann, 1967), givingprevailing understandings of historical docu-ments a substantial advantage in future legiti-macy contests.We should stress that the emergence of legiti-

mate, taken-for-granted understandings of thesedocuments—what we call historical events—doesnot entail interpretative closure. The sheer sig-nificance of the set of documents and stories re-trieved ensures that this process remains open tothe possibility of political contestation. As wehave already suggested, individuals, groups, andorganizations may seek to reevaluate and re-interpret history to justify current states of affairsor future plans (Anteby & Molnar, 2012; Cook,2007). Frequently, competition continues to definenot only thenatureandconsequencesofhistoricalnarratives but also their periodization, and eventhe recollectionof their existence. It is through thisprocess of re-remembering that collective mem-ory is transformed and the past reconstituted ashistory.

Historical Events

As individuals or organizations seek to changeinstitutions, they often attempt to propagatecertain stories and narratives—and publicize


particular interpretations of past occurrences—tolegitimate their cause (Maguire & Hardy, 2009;Zilber, 2007). Conscious efforts at influencing theretrieval process can create discontinuities inretrieval—moments in which the purposeful dis-mantling of existing narratives drives certaindocuments and stories into the shadows andbrings others into the light (Lawrence, Suddaby, &Leca, 2009; Tsoukas, 2005).

As new patterns in retrieval emerge and stabi-lize, they generate historical events or episodes ofsocietal significance that are projected onto thepast. In the process, collective perceptions aboutthese events—their boundaries, their generalfeatures, and sometimes even their evaluationand import—begin to emerge and gain legiti-macy. Not all retrieval efforts yield fully coherenthistorical events, but the more often a nascentevent is retrieved and referenced in everyday life,the more cognitively accessible it tends to be-come. Increasingly recognizable and legitimatereferences and interpretations generate histori-cal events—shared understandings that defineparticular occurrences or sets of occurrences asrecognizable and significant moments in theevolution of society (although the reasons givenfor this significance may vary greatly). Over time,these events become embedded in collectivememory.

Inprior researchoncollectivememory, scholarshave made an important distinction between“objective” history and the retrieval, commemo-ration, and/or reinterpretation of the past (Schwartz,2000). While not wholly objective in nature,recorded occurrences serve the role of “objec-tive” history in our model, whereas historicalevents are constituted by the recollectionand reinterpretation of the past. Put anotherway, occurrences and their documents are theraw material for the generation of historicalevents—understandings of past occurrences thatcan either be reproduced or disrupted throughthe retrieval process. In this sense historicalevents are social constructions—memories—that interpret some occurrence or series of occur-rences through the lens of collective memory.Memories do not go uncontested; different in-terpretations of historical events vie for publicattention and acceptance as individual and or-ganizational actors attempt to alter prevailingcollectivememories (e.g., Casey, 1997). Historiansoften play a critical role in this process, leverag-ing research to generate new interpretations that

may change our understanding of the past. Newdocuments are produced, vetted, and stored in thearchive, only to be retrieved once again so thatnew interpretations of historical events them-selvesbecomehistory (or are called into questionor forgotten; see Boje, 2008).

Metanarration

Having discussed the general process bywhich collective memory is constructed anddeployed to make sense of history, we now turnto the emergenceand influence of societal logics.As shown inFigure 1, societal logics emerge fromthe archives through a process of metanarration—the telling of stories about representationsand their documents by individuals, groups, ororganizations.In our model metanarration plays a critical role

in constituting societal logics and their domainsof jurisdiction. As discussed above, categoriza-tion systems, or modes of relating documents toone another, are central to the archives (Bowker,2008). When these categorizations are multipleand varied, archivists and their apologists arelikely to legitimate their particular systems ofclassification and organization. Metanarratives,which articulate commonalities across historicalevents, offer a means of pinning these categori-zation systems to features of “the world out there”or to the requirements of a particular field. Theyprovide legitimating accounts for categorizationsystems of occurrences and events by signifyingtheir necessity or by explaining how they could notpractically be otherwise.Nevertheless, multiple and even contradictory

metanarratives do coexist. Incumbent meta-narratives often, if not always, have challengers,each with their own adherents and detractors.Some metanarratives are likely to gain tractionacross multiple archives, whereas others remainmore focused, or become increasingly marginal-ized, disparaged, or replaced. We do not havespace here to fully unpack the competitivedynamics of metanarratives, but their ecologymay be influenced by a number of different se-lection mechanisms, including their symbolic orcognitive resonance with extant societal logics(Schudson, 1989), their utility for addressing salientsocialproblems (Thorntonetal., 2012) or supportingthe purposes of those in power (Kitchener, 2002),their relative distinctiveness among already


established metanarratives (Brewer, 1991), andconfluences of events, which we discuss below.

Over time, metanarratives are likely to con-verge and reify the categories they describeand account for—transforming legal history, forexample, from a means of categorization intoa domain of practice, which becomes taken forgranted and is projected back onto the phenome-non (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). Successful meta-narratives carve out and differentiate distinctgenres of history (Foucault, 2002). Ultimately, it notonly becomes legitimate to treat these genres asthough their constituent historical events sharedparticular types of relationship and features, ortook place in the same general field, but in-conceivable (for a period at least) not to recognizetheir coherence as distinct domains of social life.Moreover, as historians and other actors seek toexplain and justify entire domains of activity,rather than specific historical events, they drawon documentary evidence to infer the principlesby which these domains operate. As the resultingmetanarratives converge and settle on certaincore principles, categories, and vocabularies,a distinct and dynamic societal logic emerges,defining the actors, objects, goals, principles, andidentities that operatewithin a given institutionalorder (Loewenstein, Ocasio, & Jones, 2012).

SOCIETAL LOGICS AND THEIR IMPACT ONCOLLECTIVE MEMORY MAKING

A set of associated metanarratives becomesa societal logic when it achieves a certain degreeof convergence, resilience, and relevance acrossinstitutional fields. At this point the meta-narratives cease to appear as “narratives” atall, instead taking on the character of obviousinferences—commonsense descriptions of aspecific, recognizable sector within society anda matter of common knowledge that must betaken into account by any competent actor. Inprevious research within the institutional logicsperspective, scholars have identified seven so-cietal logics, each containing a set of culturalprinciples that govern their respective jurisdic-tions, and a set of exemplars and theories thatillustrate and communicate those principles(Thornton et al., 2012). We supplement this for-mulation in two ways.

First, we propose that societal logics are dis-tinct from organizational- and field-level logicsinsomuch as they are grounded in the collective

memory of historical events, rather than sharedexperience.While an individualmayhaveagreatdeal of experience dealing with a particular stateagency, his or her own family, or a specific pro-fessional context, the stories and events that aregenerally used to articulate how life workswithin“the state,” “the family,” or “the professions”maybe far removed from the individual’s own expe-riences and background. Thus, the documentsand events accumulated within archives andarranged and abstracted through metanarrationserve as the lifeblood of societal logics. In con-trast to more localized logics, societal logics arenot directly inferred from personal histories orexperiences; rather, the documents stored invarious archives, and the historical events con-stituted through those documents, form theirprimary material.Second, we propose that as a result of this his-

torical process, societal logics are not fixed butare instead contingent on the accumulation ofstories and documents within and across ar-chives. In prior research scholars have tended tocharacterize societal logics in terms of the sevenideal types mentioned above. The existence andcontent of these logics have been treated implic-itly as transhistorical. In contrast, wepropose thatboth the constitution and configuration of societallogics are contingent on the historical processesoutlined in our model such that the accumulationand metanarration of historical events can giverise to new societal logics while erasing others.So far we have discussed how the dynamics of

collective memory give rise to distinctive societallogics. In this section we turn to theorizing abouthow societal logics recursively influence the pro-duction and consumption in collective memory,and the historical trajectory of society itself. Wetheorize four main pathways through whichthis occurs: (1) the moderation of storage, (2) themoderation of retrieval, (3) the moderation ofrepresentation (for both historical events andcontemporary occurrences), and (4) the shaping offuture occurrences.The set of societal logicspresentat anyone time

plays an important role in guiding the storageprocess and, thus, the ongoing constitution of thearchives. Societal logics provide a set of ready-made categorizations against which the catego-rizations of the archives and their constituentorganizations may be evaluated. They also providea critical set of resources for justifying the contentof archives. Through this process societal logics


enter into the practices and politics of the veryarchives through which they are constituted, af-fecting the exclusion of some documents fromstorage, the organization of documents relative toone another, and the prioritization of certain in-terpretations over others.

Aside from their influence over the organiza-tion of archives, societal logics also guide theretrieval efforts of individuals and organiza-tions. Logics affect which themes and phenom-ena appear salient to individuals, priming themto focus attention on certain actors, objects, andpractices. Likewise, professional historians havein mind certain questions as they engage in theirwork—questions that likely reflect their un-derstandings of how social and cultural life can bemeaningfully divided and, ultimately, of the logicsthat bind these worlds together. Similarly, byshaping individual efforts at retrieval, societallogics help determinewhich aspects and episodesof the past are invoked in the formation of organi-zational identities, cultures, and strategies, andwhich are not. In each case logics play a role, al-though not necessarily a determinative one, inshaping which documents are retrieved and howthey are interpreted.

Finally, societal logics influence the repre-sentation of historical events and occurrences,aswell as the unwinding of future occurrences ineveryday life. By providing individuals and or-ganizations with vocabularies of identification,motivation, and action (Loewenstein et al., 2012),logics shape which categories of subjects, ob-jects, and practices can reasonably be taken intoaccount andhow their implicationsmight best beunderstood. We have shown that societal logicsdiffer from field- and organizational-level logicsin that they are decoupled from direct or sharedexperience. In the case of the family logic, forexample, behavior and cognition are likely toreflect the interaction histories of individualfamilies more than the direct influence of socie-tal logics. Nonetheless, such interactionhistoriesare inevitably affected by public expectations as-sociated with changes in societal logics, suchas changing understandings of marriage overthe centuries. Similarly, field-level logics mayshape everyday organizational activity, butthese logics are, in turn, justified by and con-structed from societal logics. Furthermore, so-cietal logics are likely to influence individualand organizational activity directly wheneverfield-level logics break down, providing a

resource for reflective and strategic actors tochallenge and change organizational- and field-level arrangements.

AN ILLUSTRATION: THE CORPORATE LOGIC INTHE UNITED STATES, 1860–1920

To bring our model of collective memory mak-ing to life, we now examine the historical devel-opment of a corporate logic in the United Statesand its crystallization as a distinct and ascendantsocietal logic in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. For our analysis we rely onsecondary sources (e.g., Porter, 2006; Sklar, 1988;Trachtenberg, 1982), generating a historical ac-count that is inevitably limited in scope but well-grounded inprior scholarship.Our intention is notto provide a comprehensive history but, rather, toillustrate how our theory might be applied in fu-ture empirical research.Historical analysis suggests that the corporate

logic emerged in the context of a broader histori-cal reordering of society, reducing the centralityof local communities and small-town life in favorof newly formed bureaucratic organizations andindustrial rationalization (Wiebe, 1967). In ourmodel’s terms, an ongoing accumulation of his-torical events began to configure a new, societal-level corporate logic. The effects of these eventswere not typically felt contemporaneously withtheir occurrence but, rather, through changes incollective memory prompted by the ongoing rep-resentation, storage, and retrieval of historicalevents and their associated documents from var-ious archives.Given space limitations, we focus our attention

on five sets of events that occurred between 1860and 1920 and shaped the emergence of the cor-porate logic in theUnitedStates, alongwith ahostof related changes in the way organizations werestructured during this time.

The Civil War

Collective memories of the Civil War playedan important role in the emergence of the cor-porate logic. Beyond the role of the war in thegrowth of many emblematic corporations, whichemerged as suppliers to the Union armies,memories of the war had a powerful effect oncultural evaluations of business and its place insociety (Smith, 2006). As people looked back onthe events of the war, they sought to make sense


of the outcome through metanarration. Thesuperiority of Union industry, transportation, andbusiness were often cited as contributing factorsto the defeat of the Confederacy. As a result, in-dustrial management, or big business, began togain traction as a legitimate topic of discussion(Hendrick, 1919). Several companies served asexemplars of the emergent corporate form. Procter& Gamble; the Pennsylvania Railroad; Andrews,Clark & Company (precursor to Standard Oil ofOhio); and Plankinton, Armour & Co. (precursor toArmour & Company) came to public attentionbecause of their contributions to the Union wareffort—as did several prominent business ty-coons, such as J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carne-gie. These exemplars, in turn, provided salientanchors for ongoing efforts at metanarration,such as Moody’s (1919) account of the railroadsand Hendrick’s (1919) treatise on the rise ofbig business more generally. The continued re-trieval of memory concerning Union businessduring and after the Civil War contributed tofavorable evaluations of the value and promiseof business organizations in the early twentiethcentury.

The Transcontinental Railroads

The symbolic power exercised by the trans-continental railroads over collective memorymaking also played a key role in the emergenceof a corporate logic of society. In the words ofTrachtenberg:

It is not difficult to account for theprominence of therailroad as the age’s symbol of mechanization andof economic and political change. . . . Not only didthe railroad system make the modern technologyvisible, intruding as a physical presence in dailylife, but it also offered means of exercising un-exampled ruthlessness of economic power . . .

At the same time the railroad system provided theage with fundamental lessons in physical andeconomic coordination. . . . In its corporate organi-zation the system stressed coordination and in-terdependence, the railroad companies being thefirst to rationalize their business offices into cen-tral- and regional-sales, freight, passenger, andlegal divisions. . . . They emerged by the 1870s ascompeting private structures employing hundredsof thousands. . . . Models of a new corporate world,they seemed the epitome of the modern machine(1982: 57–58).

This and other historical analyses (Chandler,1977; Taylor, 2015; Taylor&Neu, 1956; Trachtenberg,

1982) provide strong evidence for the emergenceof a distinct field-level logic in the railroad in-dustry by the 1870s. Because of the visibility andsuccess of the railroads, organizations fromotherfields began to draw on this logic to organize andinform their own metanarrations surrounding“the corporation.” Thus, the railroad’s corporatelogic became an effective prototype for logics inother fields, including manufacturing, commu-nications, agribusiness, and retail. As meta-narrations across fields converged, a distinctsocietal logic that transcended any particularfield or set of fields began to emerge. This de-velopment was reinforced by the impact of therailroads on public perception. Represented inthe newspapers and journals of the day, theintroduction of the transcontinental railroadshad a transformative effect on the popular imagi-nation (Cronon, 1992), generating and strengthen-ing metanarratives regarding corporate efficiencyand power. In this respect the press served asa critical archive, with its arrangements ofperiodicals, books, and journals providingthe raw materials for an emerging vision ofthe corporate form and function (cf. Anderson,1983).

Legal Cases

Changes in legal interpretations of the law andthe Constitution were also instrumental in theformation of a societal-level corporate logic (cf.Sklar, 1988). The landmark Santa Clara County v.Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court case of1886 providesaparticularly clear indication of therole of legal archives in this process. The officialrecord of the case by the court reporter indicatedthat the SupremeCourt, for the first time, held thatthe Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protectionclause granted constitutional protections to cor-porations as natural persons. Although this wasnot reflected in the official opinion of the court,which did not explicitly reference the constitutionalamendment in the court’s decision, the court recorditself continued to influence a series of decisionsthrough the 1890s, which endowed corporationswith the rights andprivileges of contractual libertynormally ascribed to individuals (Sklar, 1988: 49).The aftermath of the representation, storage, andretrieval of events within the legal archive was anincreasingly widespread vision of corporations asactors with their own interests and characters(Coleman, 1992).


World’s Fairs and Expositions

The principles and promise of the corporationwere celebrated in two key historical events: thePhiladelphia Exposition of 1876 and the World’sColumbian Exposition of 1893–1894, held in Chi-cago (Trachtenberg, 1982). Prominent corporateexhibitors highlighting their products, technolo-gies, and significance to society includedGeneralElectric, Kraft Foods, Quaker Oats, Western Elec-tric, Westinghouse, and Wrigley. With over thirtymillion attendees, the Columbian Exposition wasparticularly significant for the evolution of collec-tive memory. Both World’s Fairs not only werehistorical events with their own cultural and in-stitutional significance but also constituted tem-porary archives full of historical documents andartifacts celebrating corporate activities and oc-currences. These documents and artifacts weresubsequently transferred to other organizations,including theChicago FieldMuseum, theChicagoMuseum of Science and Industry, and the Smith-sonian Institution, allowing them tomaintain theirinfluence through this more distributed archive.

Political Events

Finally, we note the role of political events inthe rise of the corporate logic. The dramaticgrowth in power of big business in the UnitedStates did not go uncontested but, rather, wassubject to ongoing political and legal struggles(Roy, 1997; Sklar, 1988). The Populist movementpresented a major alternative, reflected in thepresidential candidacies of Democrat WilliamJennings Bryan in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Bryanadopted the rhetoric of the Populist movementand directed his orations against railroads,banks, insurance companies, and big business ingeneral. In contrast, Republican candidate Wil-liam McKinley cast big business and industry asthe means to widespread economic prosperity.The 1896 election was closely contested, butMcKinley won, with 51 percent of the vote toBryan’s 47 percent. Despite the close margin, po-litical scientists and historians consider the elec-tion of 1896 a realignment election, signalinga transformation from an economy of producercapitalism to one of industrial, corporate capi-talism (Sklar, 1988). For contemporary observerHenry Adams (1931/1917), the election playeda pivotal role in sealing the triumph of big busi-ness over populism.

Over time, coherent and convergent metanar-rations emerged to organize and theorize theseevents into a distinct and meaningful vision oflarge-scale industrial organization. Our readingof contemporaneous historical sources indicatesthat with the reelection of McKinley in 1900 andthe creation of the U.S. Steel Corporation in 1901(the largest corporation in American history atthe time), a distinct corporate logic became in-stitutionalized (albeit not uncontested). Followingthe great merger wave of 1893–1903, Americanbusinesses became larger and more influentialthan ever, further reinforcing the new logic. By theearly twentieth century, the collective focus wason centralization of control through corporations,rather than extensive managerial hierarchies(Roy, 1997). The holding company emerged as thedominant organizational structure of the time.Moreover, the legitimacy of the corporation restedon its promise of industrial progress, rather thanthe market position of the firm.Based on our reading of secondary historical

accounts, in Table 3 we summarize the corporatelogic as constituted through collective memory.By 1920 the history of big business had enteredinto collective memory (Hendrick, 1919; Moody,1919), shaping contemporary understanding ofthe corporation and its organizing principles. Ourcharacterization of the corporate logic differs fromthe transhistorical ideal type derived in priortheoretical work (Thornton, 2004), reinforcing ourcontention that a historical perspective on socie-tal logics reveals variation that would otherwiseremain hidden. The historical sourceswedrawondo not, of course, explicitly discuss the rise of thecorporate logic and its principal dimensions.Additional historical research is needed to pro-vide empirical validation and refinement ofour claims. Nevertheless, viewing societal logicsthrough the lens of history and collective memorydoes provide a substantially different perspectivethan does a focus on transhistorical ideal types(cf. Thornton et al., 2012).Our example also illustrates the importance of

archives in the formation of societal logics. In-deed, diverse sets of fields and archives werecritical to the emergence of the corporate logic,including those housing court documents andcase law, as well as influential fairs, expositions,and public museums. The public press consti-tuted yet another source of documents thatshaped the prevailing collective memory of thecorporation. Financial archives played a key role


as this process unfolded and ultimately emergedasan industry in its own right starting in the 1860s,leading to the formation of public accountingstandards and the documentation of market val-uations of large U.S. corporations. Together, sucharchives filtered, related, and propagated thehistorical events that ultimately defined andpromoted the corporate logic and its eponymousorganizations. In this sense our perspective de-parts from the more functionalist efficiency viewof the corporation associatedwithChandler (1977,1990), highlighting instead the importance of in-stitutions, culture, and politics in the corporati-zation of society (Lipartito & Sicilia, 2004).

DISCONTINUITIES IN THE EVOLUTION OFSOCIETAL LOGICS

Thus farwehaveoutlinedamodel for analyzingcollective memory making and its role in theemergence and evolution of societal logics, il-lustrating our argument with the example of thecorporate logic in the United States. We havesought to incorporate history into a theory of so-cietal logics, moving beyond treatments of theselogics as ideal types toward a framework thatredefines them as historical configurations. Thecyclical nature of our model might suggest a con-tinuous, uninterrupted evolution of collectivememory (Lippmann & Aldrich, 2014); however,historical discontinuities can and do disrupt thisprocess (Suddaby et al., 2014). Most discontinu-ities have little consequence, but over time theycan accumulate to incite more dramatic crisesand transformations in collective memory and

societal logics (Mahoney & Thelen, 2007). Suchruptures inevitably alter the processes describedin our model, and we therefore theorize aboutthem with reference to our empirical illustration.As highlighted by business historian Glenn

Porter, “The late nineteenth century’s rapid cen-tralization of capitalist institutions was an earth-quake that shook the ground on which nearly allAmericans stood” (2006: 2, citing social historianStuart Blumin, 2000). But this transformation dif-fered from an earthquake insofar as it unfoldedover decades (Porter, 2006; Trachtenberg, 1982;Wiebe, 1967). In accounting for this, we proposea theory of change distinct from models of punc-tuated equilibrium, which emphasize long pe-riods of institutional stability interrupted bycrisis-induced change (Krasner, 1984; Tushman &Romanelli, 1985), in that we highlight the ongoingaccumulation of historical events and their col-lective memory as mechanisms for societaltransformation. This difference yields four im-portant insights.First, dramatic institutional change can occur

without an exogenous shock or crisis, since small-scale occurrences contribute to the gradualreconfiguration of collectivememory and societallogics. Second, major and transformative eventsmay often take the form of opportunities ratherthan crises, and even crises may be widely per-ceived as opportunities. The status of an event asan opportunity or crisis, both at the timeand in thefuture, depends on the trajectory of collectivememory making. Third, crises should be un-derstood more broadly than in much current the-ory as including some events that are not of

TABLE 3Comparison of Ideal-Typical and Historically Derived Models of the Corporate Logic

Attributes

Corporate Logic

Ideal Type (Thornton, Ocasio, &Lounsbury, 2012)

Collective Memory, UnitedStates, 1900–1920

Root metaphor Corporation as hierarchy Corporation as big businessSources of legitimacy Market position of firm Industrial progressSources of authority • Board of directors • President

• Top management • Board of directorsSources of identity Bureaucratic roles Industry and market positionBasis of norms Employment by the firm Procedural rationalityBase of attention Status in market Corporate sizeBasis of strategy Increased size and diversification Market growth and consolidationInformal control system Organizational culture Loyalty to business leadersEconomic system Managerial capitalism Corporate capitalism


immediate import. Of course, some major events,both opportunities and crises, do generate almostcontemporaneous societal shifts (such as thePanic of 1893 or the completion of the Trans-continental Railroad). However, we posit thatmany crises emerge primarily through ongoingcollective memory making, as emerging meta-narratives position certain events as signs of so-cial upheaval. This may take the form of a singleevent that is slowly “revealed” as a watershedmoment, or it may occur when a number of dif-ferent events are understood as signaling thesame underlying problem or need for change (aconfluence of events). In each case a disjuncturebetween past and present (and future) is rhe-torically and symbolically effected—and a cri-sis is created. Fourth, the impact of a crisis maynot be contemporaneous; rather, a crisis maybe influential long after its constituent eventsare past.

This approach parallels the historical institu-tionalism in political science, which combinesdiscontinuous causal chains with threshold ef-fects and theaccumulation of evolutionary changeto explain complex historical transformations(Pierson, 2004: Schneiberg, 2007). However, our fo-cus on collective memory departs from this per-spective by granting greater import to the role ofcultural change in historical transformation(Lipartito & Sicilia, 2004; Rowlinson & Hassard,2014). Changes in the collective memory of his-torical events and of society more broadly gener-ate historical discontinuities in contemporarycultural structures, including societal logics. Whilean exhaustive examination of these discontinuitiesis beyond the scope of this article, we identify anddiscuss two distinct forms: the confluence of eventsacross institutional fields and changes to the com-municative infrastructure.

Confluence of Events

One mechanism explaining historical changesin societal logics and their configuration is theconfluence of historical events across fields andinstitutional orders, or a perceived shift in “whatis happening” within a given society. As notedabove, retrieval processes can lead to variationsin ongoing interpretations of historical eventsand documents, while maintaining the guidingprinciples of societal logics. For these logics tochange, events and their metanarratives musttranscend individual fields inanapparent “phase

shift.” Prior theory has highlighted event se-quences as important drivers of change in field-level logics (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008); however,these sequences require a direct connection be-tween historical events. By emphasizing the con-fluence of events, we extend this view to includeevents that may not be directly connected to oneanother and that may occur across seeminglyunrelated field and societal sectors.We posit that a confluence of eventswill tend to

generate historical discontinuities in existingmetanarratives whenever these events are notreadily represented bymeans of existing societallogics. Historical discontinuities, in the form ofsubstantial ruptures in societal logics and theirconfigurations, are generated through collectivememory making, as old cultural distinctionsare either challenged or disregarded on the basisof this confluence and new understandingsare proposed and contested (see Glaeser, 2011).Through this process, previous understandings ofhistorical events and documents can be radicallyaltered. Old documents may be transformed intoanthropological material, providing insight intoesoteric beliefs or errors of understanding ratherthan any “real” insight into the events in question(Glaeser, 2011; Zeitlyn, 2012). New documents andmetanarratives may situate old events withinnovel plots, featuring different actors and themes(Schwartz, 2005). Ultimately, cumulative changesin metanarration will likely influence future oc-currences, embedding significant and epochaltransformations in societal logics.In the case of the corporate logic, the confluence

of events that led to its transformation was builton a loosely interconnected set of events that un-folded across the political, legal, financial, andcommunity spheres. These events included theSherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the Panic of 1893,the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893–1894,the election of William McKinley in 1896 (andreelection in 1900), and the creation of the U.S.Steel Corporation in 1901. Over time, diverse in-terpretations of events in these various fields be-gan to converge, leading toaperceivedconfluenceof events and a recognizable discontinuity in so-ciety. In turn, this led to a more general change inmetanarratives concerning the corporation and itsrole in the economy, politics, and society at large.The societal logic of the U.S. corporation, with theopportunities and threats it highlighted, emergedfrom and later reinforced the prevailing collectivememory, as well as the metanarratives within


which these events were situated. This logic thenbecame a common framework for interpretationand action across multiple organizations and in-stitutional fields.

Changes in the Communicative Infrastructure

Every aspect of our model is also dependent onthe communicative infrastructure characterizinga particular society (cf. Bowker, 2008). By commu-nicative infrastructurewemean the configurationof communication technologies, systems, net-works, and practices that characterize a particularhistorical period—the general sociotechnologicalsystem through which individuals connect andcommunicate with each other. The presentation,storage, and retrieval of occurrencesandhistoricaleventsall dependon the circuits of communicationin which individuals and groups are situated. Inturn, these circuits of communication are enabledand shaped by sociomaterial technologies, suchas books, pamphlets, telegraphs, telephones, mailsystems, road and railroad systems, filing sys-tems, computers, and the internet (Bowker, 2008;Chandler, 1977; Yates, 1989).

When considered collectively, communicativeinfrastructures serve as sources of historicaldiscontinuities in logics and historical shifts inthe process of collective memory making itself(Bowker, 2008). The communicative infrastructurefurnishes the pathways by which representationand documentation occur, as well as shapes thenumber, nature, and effectiveness of the gate-keepers who seek to mold these processes. Thus,this infrastructure helps determine which occur-rences emerge as noteworthy, which historicalevents aremost frequently retrieved, and how themetanarration of events shapes collective mem-ory (Olick, 1999). It also creates opportunities forindividuals to make sense of and represent his-torical events, and influences the extent to whichpotential representations and documents aresubsequently tested and elaborated through en-gagement with particular audiences. Commu-nicative infrastructure affects storage as well,providing the technological and social design ofrepositories and the possibilities for more or lessdetailed classification and cataloguing withinthe archives. Finally, it affects retrieval by shap-ing the social and material ease of access to ar-chives and the documents stored therein. Majortransformations in the communicative infrastruc-ture unavoidably influence the reproduction and

transformation of societal logics, whether the shiftin infrastructure takes the form of administrativereform (Bowker & Star, 2000; Espeland & Stevens,2008; Scott, 1998),managerial innovations (Chandler,1977; Yates, 1989), or technological innovations(Assmann, 2008; Bowker, 2008; Bowker, Baker,Millerand, & Ribes, 2009).Bowker (2008) indicated that changes in com-

municative infrastructure create distinct epochsof memory wherein different forms of archivespredominate (although he used different termi-nology). Different epochs of memory are shapedby different forms of archiving, including oraltransmission, written transmission, the forma-tion of formal libraries and monastery collec-tions in the late Middle Ages, the printing press,file cards, mechanical writing, electronic se-quencing, and most recently the internet. WhileBowker explored the impact of these changes onmemory in the sciences, shifts in archival prac-tices also lead to discontinuities in the evolutionof societal logics. For example, Beniger (1986)explored how changes in communicative tech-nologies between 1840 and 1920 encouraged theemergence of an information society, which pro-duced a number of new organizations devoted tocommunication technology and reconfigured theroles of certain societal logics in a manner similarto contemporary transformations in informationtechnology (Castells, 2000).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

To summarize, we have developed a newframework to explain the historical constitution ofsocietal logics. These logics define the funda-mental forms of life that characterize a society,providing the basic organizing principles for re-ligious or family life or for market transactions(for example). In prior work on societal logics,scholars have treated them primarily as idealtypes—transhistorical generalizationsof abstractprinciples that may apply across distinct socie-ties and histories. Here we have developed analternative approach, one that makes history andmemory making central to the development andreproduction of societal logics. We have done soby positing collective memory as a critical, multi-staged process through which logics emergeand evolve. By this means we seek both tomake the institutional logics perspective morehistorically cognizant (Kipping & Usdiken, 2014)and to increase its worth as a tool for analytically


structured histories in organization studies andbeyond (Rowlinson et al., 2014).

According to our theory, collective memory re-fers to both process and content: a process ofrepresenting, storing, and retrieving memories ofoccurrences and historical events and a specificset of memories documented and stored in ar-chives. We posit that collective memory, ratherthan an aggregation of individual memories ora shared consensus (cf. Olick & Robbins, 1998),operates through material documents, which arestored in archives and shape the contours of his-torical events. Societal logics emerge and arereproduced through archives as metanarrativesconverge across fields and impose coherence ona wide range of documents and the occurrencesand historical events they represent. Althoughconvergent metanarratives do generate enduringcultural structures, our framework also accountsfor the recursive reinterpretation of eventsthrough the retrieval process, as well as the po-tentially disruptive role of historical discontinu-ities in collective memory making, which canradically change both the content and configura-tion of societal logics.

Historicizing the Institutional Logics Perspective

We make three main contributions to the in-stitutional logics perspective. First, we moveaway from a static conceptualization of societallogics. Rather than relying on transhistoricalideal types, we propose that societal logicsshould be understood as historically situated.Configurations of societal logics, along with theset of social domains they distinguish and theirrelative jurisdictions, reflect the dynamics of col-lective memory making. Thus, the status of themarket or corporate logics as societal logics is notgiven but instead reflects a particular historicalmoment (and the histories told at that time). Fur-thermore, the principles and practices of anygiven societal logic are not fixed. Rather, theselogics are subject to reconfiguration as the col-lective memory of historical events creates shiftsin patterns of metanarration. Our model thusshows how societal logics emerge in their histor-ical specificity.

Second, our theory contributes to the under-standing of cross-level perspectives on institu-tional logics and the distinction between societaland field-level institutional logics. In particular,it reveals societal logics as thoroughly historical

formations, shaped by lower-level occurrencesand archives. Archives serve as a prism throughwhich to view not only societal logics but alsofield-level institutions and organizations. Field-level variations in vocabularies and associatedarchiving practices can generate changes in in-stitutional logics at the field level, as well asinterfield differentiation (Loewenstein et al., 2012;Ocasio, Loewenstein, & Nigam, 2015). Critically,however, this process is complemented by changesin the direct experiences of a field (Purdy & Gray,2009; Seo & Creed, 2002). This stands in contrast withthe formation of societal logics, where immediatelyshared experiences are likely to be few and farbetween. Societal logics cannot be explainedthrough the aggregation of organizational- andfield-level activities alone; instead, “shared” ex-periences are provided by historical events andmetanarratives. More so than field logics, societallogics are crafted from history itself.Third, we build theory on discontinuities in so-

cietal logics and the interinstitutional systemsthey constitute. The configuration and content ofsocietal logics, and the degree of institutionalcomplexity experienced by individuals and or-ganizations within that society, are dependent onthe contemporary communicative infrastructure,as well as confluences of historical events. Themarket, corporate, professional, community, state,and even family logics are all susceptible totransformation via historical discontinuities incommunicative infrastructure. Similarly, they aresusceptible to the creation of historical disjunc-tures or epochal shifts through collective memorymakingand the confluence of events.Our theory isthusnot onlya theoreticalmodel of societal historybutalsoamodel cognizantofhistoricalepochsanddiscontinuities (Kipping & Usdiken, 2014).

Contributions to the Study of Collective Memory

Beyond introducinganddeveloping the conceptof collective memory to the study of societallogics, our theoretical framework highlights therole of archives in storing and organizing thecontent of collective memory and in constructinghistory. As semistructured repositories of knowl-edge concerning ongoing occurrences and his-torical events, archives provide the means bywhich collective memories can transcend indi-vidual minds. Participants do not need to rely ontheir own experience of society and its in-stitutional orders but instead can draw on the


documented experiences of others, past andpresent. Collectivememory is not simply stored inthese archives to remain inert and collect dust.Rather, these memories and their material repre-sentations are retrieved to reinforce or contestexisting interpretations of historical documentsand events, thereby enabling the cultural trans-mission of memories from one historical period toanother.

The archives, embodied in collections of docu-ments and structured by a cultural system ofclassification, generate a complex history of so-cietal events. Our theory posits that archives helpgenerate durable cultural structures, bindinghistorical events together throughmetanarration.Metanarratives are emergent accomplishmentsof the archives, the historical development ofwhich shapes the emergence and evolution ofsocietal logics. One process that shapes the ar-chives’ development is theorization, a phenome-non that has been highlighted previously in thecontext of field-level logics (Lok, 2010; Rao et al.,2003). We argue that theorization also operates atthe level of society, with historians—both popularand professional—playing a key role in con-structing theories of societies. Metanarrativesmay also be generated through more inductiveprocesses—for example, via analogies and com-parisons between stories of distinct historicalevents (Connor, 2012).

Implications for Organizations and Practice

Our focus on the historicity and contingency ofsocietal logics provides us with a distinct lens tounderstand and study organizations and theirpractices. Here we highlight three implicationsin particular for the study of (1) organizationalculture and strategy, (2) entrepreneurship, and(3) the evolution of fields and organizationalecologies.

Consistent with prior theory and research, weview societal logics as providing general prin-ciples that reflective actors can use to create,maintain, or disrupt organizational- and field-level arrangements, or to guide action when locallogics fail. When the collective memory makingthat constitutes societal logics shifts, so, too, dothe principles and values that underlie organi-zational cultures and strategies. Our model thuspoints to the importance of historical disjuncturesin collective memory making, which are likelyboth to influence the shaping of subsequent

organizations and to reshape extant organiza-tional cultures and practices. Our theory alsopoints to the importance of collective memory inmediating the influence of societal logics. Theselogics shape the ease with which different his-torical events and exemplars can be retrieved asrelevant guides for individuals and organizations,thus influencing the framing contests throughwhich strategy making is achieved (Kaplan, 2008),as well as the formation of organizational cul-ture and identity (Gioia, Patvardhan, Hamilton,& Corley, 2013). In everyday circumstances thismay well be the primary mechanism of influ-ence for societal logics.Societal logics also shape opportunities for

entrepreneurship. Collective memories providesources of inspiration for individual entrepreneurs,just as memories of the U.S. Civil War encouragedentrepreneurial investment in corporations andlarge-scale industry. These memories providesources of variation in organizational behavior,and drawing on collective memories can alsoserve as a resource as entrepreneurs attempt tomake their innovations acceptable and legitimate(see Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001).Historical shifts in societal logics also influence

field-level changes, shaping the organizationalforms and practices considered legitimate withinparticular fields or industries and, thus, the evo-lution of organizational and professional ecolo-gies. For example, as the societal logic of thecorporation has shifted, so, too, has the roleandnature of corporate governance. The early-twentieth-century corporation had significantconcentration of ownership, with boards of di-rectors and financial owners still having sub-stantial power. After the 1920s, the corporate logicbegan to change, with separation of ownershipand control being increasingly emphasized andmanagerial power waxing relative to that ofowners (Berle & Means, 1967). By the 1980s, a sig-nificant countermovement was under way asthe rhetoric and practices of shareholder valuegained substantial influence within corporations(Fligstein, 2002). The collective memory of thecorporation in the late twentiethandearly twenty-first century is no longer dominated by storiesemphasizing steepmanagerial hierarchies; thefocus instead is on responsiveness to financialmarkets (Davis, 2009). In each period societalnorms of appropriate corporate form and behaviorhave shaped organizational activities acrossa variety of industries and fields.


These historical shifts have a concrete influ-ence on a variety of key empirical relationshipsandvariables in organizational analysis. Shifts inthe relative influence of logics shape the dynam-ics of corporate governance at both the fieldand organizational levels, including the relativepower of owners and executives (Joseph, Ocasio,&McDonnell, 2014). Historical discontinuities alsoshift the selection environments of organizationssuch that organizations that are more congruentwith shifting societal logics will be more likely topersist, whereas those that remain tied to old-form logics will be less likely to survive andflourish. Thus, historical shifts in societal logicsnot only drive shifts in organizational strategymaking andpatterns of entrepreneurship but alsoinfluence rates of organizational survival.

Concluding Remarks

Understanding historical changes to institu-tional logics through collective memory makinghas important implications for empirical researchas well as theory, both in the social sciences andin history. Textual and other forms of contentanalysis now constitute a well-established set ofmethods for studying institutional logics and theireffects. Although extant research focuses on field-level logics (Jones, Maoret, Massa, & Svegenova,2012; Weber, Patel, & Heinze, 2013), our theorysuggests that archival documents can also serveas an important source for examining societallogics and their effects, and that archives are animportant site for research into their ongoingconstitution. In addition to encouraging the en-gagement of the logics perspective with historyand the analysis of collective memory, our theorypoints to the importance of communicative in-frastructures. We have suggested that changes tothese infrastructures have redefined the boundariesof societal institutions, and our understandings ofthose institutions, by increasing the openness ofcollective memory making and the accessibilityof collective memory. Organizational scholarsshould continue to take advantage of these newsources of data to study this shift in infrastructureand its consequences for societal logics and their(re)configurations.

Our emphasis on collective memory furthersuggests the importance of empirically examin-ing not only the storage of current events in ar-chives but also changes in the interpretation ofhistorical events (Schwartz, 1996, 2000). Widespread

changes in the collective memory of past eventsmay serve as a critical indicator of shiftingmetanarratives and, by proxy, the emergence,transformation, or reconfiguration of institutionallogics. Similarly, our approach suggests thatwhen examining representations and documen-tations of current societal events, focusing on theselective retrieval of analogies from the past mayhelp us understand and measure how societallogics evolve. Future research might employ ourmodel to study variations in patterns of retrievaland sensemaking over time.Finally, our historical approach to the formation

of societal logics and institutions provides a newperspective on the study of history itself. We ar-gue that as logics change, histories of past eventschange as well, reflecting new configurations ofsocietal logics that shape understandings of thepast, present, and future. Historians and socialscientists alike can build on these insights to de-velop new measures and strategies to study his-tory, empowering them to systematically trackhow the emergence and interpretation of eventsrelate to the evolution and transformation of in-stitutions, logics, and archives.

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William Ocasio ([email protected]) is the John L. and Helen KelloggProfessor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management,Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. His current re-search interests include institutional logics, managerial and organizational attention,power in organizations, and the role of vocabularies in organizations and institutions.

Michael Mauskapf ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate inmanagement and organizations at Northwestern University, and holds a Ph.D. in musi-cology from the University of Michigan. His research interests include innovation incultural markets, institutional complexity in the nonprofit sector, and the nexus betweenhistory and organizational change.

Christopher W. J. Steele ([email protected]) is assistant professor of strategic man-agement and organization at the University of Alberta and did his doctoral work at theKellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. His research interests includethe dynamics of institutions and practices, the formation of collective intentionality andidentity, and the processes of knowledge production and consumption.


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