Organizational memorialization: spatial history and legitimation as chiasms

TY - JOUR

T1 - Organizational memorialization

T2 - spatial history and legitimation as chiasms

AU - de Vaujany, François Xavier

AU - Vaast, Emmanuelle

AU - Clegg, Stewart R.

AU - Aroles, Jeremy

N1 - Funding Information: Funding : This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Publisher Copyright: © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

PY - 2021/2/23

Y1 - 2021/2/23

N2 - Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how historical materialities might play a contemporary role in legitimation processes through the memorialization of history and its reproduction in the here-and-now of organizations and organizing. Design/methodology/approach: The authors briefly review the existing management and organization studies (MOS) literature on legitimacy, space and history; engage with the work of Merleau-Ponty to explore how organizational legitimacy is managed in time and space; and use the case of two Parisian universities to illustrate the main arguments of the paper. Findings: The paper develops a history-based phenomenological perspective on legitimation processes constitutive of four possibilities identified by means of chiasms: heterotopic spatial legacy, thin spatial legacy, institutionalized spatial legacy and organizational spatial legacy. Research limitations/implications: The authors discuss the implications of this research for the neo-institutional literature on organizational legitimacy, research on organizational space and the field of management history. Originality/value: This paper takes inspiration from the work of Merleau-Ponty on chiasms to conceptualize how the temporal layers of space and place that organizations inhabit and inherit (which we call “spatial legacies”), in the process of legitimation, evoke a sensible tenor.

AB - Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how historical materialities might play a contemporary role in legitimation processes through the memorialization of history and its reproduction in the here-and-now of organizations and organizing. Design/methodology/approach: The authors briefly review the existing management and organization studies (MOS) literature on legitimacy, space and history; engage with the work of Merleau-Ponty to explore how organizational legitimacy is managed in time and space; and use the case of two Parisian universities to illustrate the main arguments of the paper. Findings: The paper develops a history-based phenomenological perspective on legitimation processes constitutive of four possibilities identified by means of chiasms: heterotopic spatial legacy, thin spatial legacy, institutionalized spatial legacy and organizational spatial legacy. Research limitations/implications: The authors discuss the implications of this research for the neo-institutional literature on organizational legitimacy, research on organizational space and the field of management history. Originality/value: This paper takes inspiration from the work of Merleau-Ponty on chiasms to conceptualize how the temporal layers of space and place that organizations inhabit and inherit (which we call “spatial legacies”), in the process of legitimation, evoke a sensible tenor.

KW - History

KW - Legitimation

KW - Memorialization

KW - Merleau-Ponty

KW - Space

KW - Spatial legacy

KW - Time

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85094868633&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1108/QROM-01-2020-1887

DO - 10.1108/QROM-01-2020-1887

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85094868633

SN - 1746-5648

VL - 16

SP - 76

EP - 97

JO - Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal

JF - Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal

IS - 1

ER -