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How is collective remembering inhibited by organizational changes which were not intended to manipulate it? And how does collective forgetting affect workers' power and sense of identity? We rely on an ethnographic study of a charitable organization that went through recent organizational changes to study two processes constitutive of collective forgetting. The first process consists in the past becoming unusable because once-useful memories lost their practical usefulness for participants' new activities. The second process consists in the past becoming uprooted because the social relations through which memories used to be shared had changed beyond recognition. Our findings provide insights into the organizational processes through which memories cease to circulate. They also help understand the complex relations between memory, power relations and participants' sense of identity.
This paper provides an overview and discussion of the rapidly growing literature on organizational memory studies (OMS). We define OMS as an inquiry into the ways that remembering and forgetting shape, and are shaped by, organizations and organizing processes. The contribution of this article is threefold. We briefly review what we understand by organizational memory and explore some key debates and points of contestation in the field. Second, we identify four different perspectives that have been developed in OMS (functional, interpretive, critical and performative) and expand upon each perspective by showcasing articles published over the past decade. In particular, we examine four papers previously published in Organization Studies to show the distinctiveness of each perspective. Finally, we identify a number of areas for future research to facilitate the future development of OMS.
In this chapter, I argue that while participant observation is seen as the flagship method for ethnographic research, stories and myths are what drive researchers' curiosity and imagination. I provide a brief overview of organizational storytelling to show its parallels with ethnographic research. This is followed by a discussion on how ethnographic and storytelling research can be combined to yield a situated understanding of organizational life. In particular, I introduce "ethno-narrative" and "ethno-story" as two alternative research approaches with the potential to advance the field forward.
One of the most distinctive features of the changing religious and cultural landscape in England between 1660 and 1720 was the reopening of the public theatres, after their closure in 1642. This reawakening generated a rich repertoire of new plays. This thesis seeks to examine how these plays treated religion, broadly conceived, and what they tell us about both drama and attitudes to religious institutions and faith. Religion was one of the most ubiquitous issues of the period and the stage was one of its most striking cultural representations. This thesis brings together for the first time these two fundamental elements of life in England over the whole of the long Restoration period. Many new plays of the period engaged with religious issues and included in their cast lists a wide range of religious characters, both clerical and lay. This thesis will show that most of these characters are shown in a negative light. Many of these portrayals were used to attack specific religious groups at times of conflict, but the relative absence of positive religious portrayals means that any counterbalancing force is limited. The remorselessness of these negative portrayals raises the question of the attitude shown in these plays to religion in general. The central argument of this thesis is that the dramatists' attitude to religion was, at the very least, either intentionally or carelessly disrespectful. In some cases, there is evidence of what one of the characters calls 'a damn'd Atheistical Age'.
Purpose:
From previous studies, we had observed that the number of biomedical engineers and technicians (BMETs) skilled in the maintenance of medical devices (MDs) were limited in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and that a likely parallelism existed between BME maintenance-related tasks and house chores mainly carried out by women in daily life. Our objective in carrying out this study was to understand underlying local cultural and social factors and domestic traditions interfering with the inclusion of women in the field of clinical and biomedical engineering (BME), and to identify existing gaps in opportunities for women in Engineering, Science and Technology (EST) in this region.
Methods:
We carried out an online survey involving 51 respondents (70.6% women, 29.4% men), to investigate gender-biased and cultural perceptions of maintenance-related tasks among engineers/technologists/technicians in BME and other allied professions in SSA. The survey was refined through focus groups and pilot tests to assess its validity, and then shared among specific associations of women in engineering and other bodies in EST, as well as some hospital communities and institutions.
Results:
The survey brought to light evidence of prejudices against women in the society and workplace and showed that the adoption of our parallelism hypothesis has potential for increasing medical device maintenance practices in SSA hospitals.
Conclusions:
There is an apparent need to further study the possible effects of this sociological model through leveraging local culture and domestic traditions in ways that could ultimately increase the leadership and numbers of women BMETs in SSA.
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