Organizational memorialization: spatial history and legitimation as chiasms. Issue 1 (3rd November 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: de Vaujany, François-Xavier; Vaast, Emmanuelle; Clegg, Stewart R.; Aroles, Jeremy
• Is Part Of: Qualitative research in organizations and management. Volume 16:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 76
• Page End: 97
• Publication Date: 2020-11-03
• Subjects: Legitimation -- History -- Space -- Time -- Spatial legacy -- Merleau-Ponty -- Memorialization; Industrial management -- Research -- Periodicals; Business enterprises -- Research -- Periodicals; Qualitative research -- Periodicals; 658.0072
• DOI: 10.1108/QROM-01-2020-1887
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1746-5648

Abstract

Abstract : 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.