889737

research-article2019
MLQ0010.1177/1350507619889737Management LearningCoraiola and Murcia

Original Article

Management Learning
2020, Vol. 51(2) 227­–240
From organizational learning © The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1350507619889737
https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507619889737
Redrawing the boundaries journals.sagepub.com/home/mlq

of the field

Diego M Coraiola*
University of Alberta, Canada

Maria Jose Murcia*

Universidad Austral, Argentina

Abstract
In this article, we advocate for a more balanced approach to the study of the past in management and
organization studies. We define organizational mnemonics as a broader field of inquiry focused on theorizing
the past as an integral part of organizational life, including three major epistemic communities—that is,
functionalist, interpretive, and critical. We contend that much of organizational mnemonics research has
been dominated by functionalism, at the expense of other approaches. To remediate this situation, we first
characterize organizational mnemonics’ core epistemic communities. Second, we look at the boundary work
at the interstices of these communities to explore possibilities of dialogue among them. We argue that the
future of the study of the past in organizations should acknowledge different perspectives, the intersections
among them, and make a conscientious effort to maintain diversity of scholarship in the field.

Keywords
Critical management studies, knowledge management, organizational learning, organizational memory,
organizational mnemonics, organizational remembering and forgetting

Introduction
Scholarship about the past in management and organizational studies (MOS) has changed sub-
stantially in the past 15 years. The “historical turn” (Clark and Rowlinson, 2004) has challenged
established paradigms and opened up novel spaces of theorization (Rowlinson and Hassard,
2014). However, epistemological, ideological, and relational divides among different scholarly

*Authors are listed in alphabetical order as they equally contributed to the paper.

Corresponding author:
Maria Jose Murcia, IAE Business School and Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales, Universidad Austral, Mariano Acosta s/n
y Ruta Nac. 8, B1629WWA Pilar, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Email: mmurcia@iae.edu.ar
228 Management Learning 51(2)

communities might prevent established groups from appreciating the full scope of the field in
which they participate (Haas, 1992). This might also prevent them from engaging with alternative
perspectives and criticism, which could lead to enhanced creativity for future research (Lewis and
Kelemen, 2002).
In this article, we argue for the recognition of a distinct scholarly field around the study of the
past of organizations and organizing. We define organizational mnemonics (OM) as a field of
inquiry that includes the related literatures of organizational learning (e.g. Argote, 2011; Bapuji
and Crossan, 2004), knowledge management (e.g. Kogut and Zander, 1992), social remembering
and forgetting (e.g. Rowlinson et al., 2010), rhetorical history and the uses of the past (e.g. Suddaby
et al., 2010; Wadhwani et al., 2018), organizational stupidity (e.g. Alvesson and Spicer, 2012), and
strategic ignorance (e.g. McGoey, 2012). Mnemonics refers to the processes of thought that are
connected with the past and how it is preserved, transmitted, experienced, remembered, and repre-
sented. At heart, we argue that there exists a single field with multiple epistemic communities that
focuses on theorizing the past as an integral part of organizational life.
We identify three major communities within OM that can be mapped onto paradigms in organi-
zational theory. Following Burrell and Morgan (1979), the three major communities can be classi-
fied as functionalism, interpretivism, and a “third-order” community (Hassard and Wolfram Cox,
2013) that we have labeled critical, after Critical Management Studies. Functionalism has been the
dominant paradigm, emerging from the behavioral theory of the firm (e.g. Levitt and March, 1988;
Walsh and Ungson, 1991). The interpretive paradigm has its roots in Berger and Luckmann’s
(1966) claim that humans collectively create and sustain social phenomena through social prac-
tices. Interpretivism encompasses the “practice approach” (Gherardi, 2000), as well as more recent
contributions grounded in social memory studies (Rowlinson et al., 2010). The critical perspective,
in turn, has elements from both radical structuralism and humanism (Adler et al., 2007), based on
post-structural, post-modern, and post-colonial influences (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012; Durepos
and Mills, 2012). Arguably, such wide-ranging intellectual influences would not coalesce into a
homogeneous whole (Fournier and Grey, 2000). Nonetheless, we follow Hassard and Wolfram
Cox (2013) in classifying this community within, rather than without, Burrell and Morgan frame-
work. We argue that the dominance of functionalism has relegated the other two communities to
the fringes of the field. Therefore, our article aims at remediating this situation by providing equal
footing to the other approaches in OM. We believe that more plural scholarship has potential to
generate richer insights about the importance of the past for organizing.
While acknowledging that each community in the field has distinct onto-epistemological com-
mitments that represent fundamentally different ways of making sense of the object of study (Vaara
and Lamberg, 2016), we contend that the assumptions they build upon are translatable through
“boundary work” at these intellectual margins (Gioia and Pitre, 1990; Weaver and Gioia, 1994).
Thus, alongside Hassard and Wolfram Cox (2013), we consider the epistemic communities within
OM as incompatible, rather than “incommensurable” (Kuhn, 1962). From this vantage perspective,
we shed light upon paradigmatic alternatives within the field, and foster greater awareness of epis-
temological pluralism in OM, allowing researchers to better justify their theoretical stances and, in
turn, develop better and deeper theories (Rowlinson et al., 2014; Willmott, 1993a).
To achieve this aim, we first reflectively engage with past and present scholarship to provide a
historical overview of the evolution of OM and identify the emergence of its three major communi-
ties, functionalism, interpretivism, and critical, with their respective thematic foci. Second, we
characterize each of these communities and highlight their contrasts in terms of their onto-episte-
mological commitments. Third, we look at the boundary work that has been taking place at the
interstices of these communities to explore possibilities of dialogue among them. From there, an
agenda for future research is outlined.
Coraiola and Murcia 229

OM as a field of inquiry
Organization scholars have long been interested in the implications of the past for organizing.
Stinchcombe (1965) provided a seminal conceptualization of the influence of the past on the
behavior of organizations. However, his approach conflates the constructs of history and the past.
From this perspective, the past is viewed as inherited structures that are mindlessly reproduced,
generate unexpected patterns for organizations in the present, and affect their ability of surviving
in the future. Human action is conceived as a mere vehicle for the repetition of the past, such that
variations in the organizational present (and future) would be outside of the scope of action of
managers.
Early conceptualizations, however, have done little to theorize how the past survives and how it
influences the present and future of organizations. This gap has been addressed by the research on
organizational learning (e.g. Levitt and March, 1988; Simon, 1991). Learning scholars have tended
to adopt a slightly less passive view of the past and have contended that the past is a source of
knowledge that managers may draw upon to improve organizational processes.
A critique to learning scholars’ conceptualization of the past emerged in association with the
“historical turn” in MOS (Clark and Rowlinson, 2004). From this perspective, the past changes over
time and can be revised and reinterpreted in alternative ways (Feldman and Feldman, 2006). In addi-
tion, a third conceptualization of the past emerged premised on the idea that the past “per se” does
not exist as an object of inquiry, but as discourse (Jenkins, 2003; Munslow, 1997). This approach
calls attention to the processes through which the past is conceived, contested, and negotiated, as
well as the interests and ideologies that motivate the creation of particular representations of the past
in the present. Ultimately, this perspective attempts to uncover the silences and absences of previous
representations towards actively reincorporating absent voices and actors into the picture of the past.
These different assumptions about the past have coalesced into distinct epistemic communities
that have been involved in the study of the past in organizations. Heretofore, however, there has
been little recognition of a common research enterprise across communities. We argue that current
definitions of organizational learning as a field of inquiry are insufficient to account for the diver-
sity of approaches theorizing the past. This situation has important implications for the communi-
ties participating in the field. First, it creates an artificial division of the discipline into different
fields of inquiry which would be better understood as a single field with multiple paradigmatic
alternatives. Second, it disconnects the research on related empirical phenomena to the extent that
each field specializes in a particular set of constructs. Third, it prevents the interaction of like-
minded researchers who belong to a broader community with potential to devise more comprehen-
sive theories of organizations (Lewis and Kelemen, 2002). Furthermore, current boundaries may
also be the result of power relations within a field that tend to privilege the work of some communi-
ties, leaving alternative approaches underrepresented (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977).
We engage in “boundary work” (Lamont and Molnár, 2002) as an attempt to uncover the ten-
sions within the field, provide equal footing for all the approaches, and foster an enhanced reflexiv-
ity of a common intellectual enterprise among scholars. We propose the term organizational
mnemonics to refer to the broader field of inquiry encompassing the related literatures of organiza-
tional learning, knowledge management, social remembering and forgetting, uses of the past, as
well as organizational stupidity and ignorance. Mnemonics encompasses the processes of thought
that are connected with the past and how it is preserved, transmitted, experienced, remembered,
and represented. The term comes from the Proto-Indo-European root men (“to think”)—as used in
the Greek words mnemon (remembering, mindful) and mneme (remembrance, record)—and could
be broadly defined as “of or pertaining to memory,” be this what is remembered or how something
is remembered, as well as the devices used for remembering. These issues are approached by three
230 Management Learning 51(2)

main perspectives, which we describe in the following sections. We do not attempt to be exhaustive
in our account, but to summarize some significant points in the history of OM.

Three communities and a single research field

Scholarly inquiry into learning and knowledge in organizations began with James March, Herbert
Simon, and Richard Cyert at Carnegie Mellon University in the late 1950s. Influenced by the
behavioral theory of the firm (Cyert and March, 1963), organizational learning was initially con-
ceptualized as a threefold process comprising (1) knowledge acquisition, involving the processes
through which individuals’ knowledge is encoded into organizational knowledge; (2) knowledge
storage or “memory,” describing how organizational knowledge is retained, reused, as well as
discarded to make way for new knowledge and innovation; and (3) knowledge retrieval, pertaining
to how new individuals acquire stored knowledge to be reproduced day-to-day (Argote, 2011).
This early research became an integrated paradigm, which we label as functionalism, that soon
dominated the field. Several other studies have contributed to this literature by theorizing the
dynamic construction of knowledge (Nonaka, 1994), distinguishing the multilevel processes
underpinning organizational learning (Crossan et al., 1999), and discussing the importance of man-
aging resource investments in exploration and exploitation activities (March, 1991).
Around the mid-1990s, research in organizational learning and knowledge experienced an
“empirical turn” (Bapuji and Crossan, 2004). In conjunction with the resource-based view of the
firm (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984), this line of work contributed to the development of the
knowledge-based view, and the related literatures on absorptive capacity and dynamic capabilities
(Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Grant, 1996; Teece et al., 1997). These studies set out to empirically
examine how learning and knowledge management may enhance organizational performance,
retaining the fundamental premises of earlier conceptual literature (Vera et al., 2011).
During the same decade of the 1990s, a new paradigmatic alternative—which we labeled as
interpretivism—started to develop, influenced by phenomenology (Berger and Luckmann, 1966),
cultural studies (Cook and Yanow, 1993), and the “historical turn” in MOS (Clark and Rowlinson,
2004). Some of the main divergences with earlier literature included a reaction against “objective”
representations of organizational life, proposing that individuals engage in the construction of
social reality. There was also a shift in focus from the economic outcomes of organizational learn-
ing and knowledge management to the processes of learning and knowing as social practices
(Karataş-Özkan and Murphy, 2010). These ideas would later develop as two distinct yet interre-
lated strands of interpretive research, as outlined below.
The first strand maintains the earlier focus on learning and knowledge management. However,
rooted in phenomenology and grounded in the notion of practice, this approach reveals how learn-
ing, knowing, conflict, history and its interpretation take place in every-day organizational experi-
ence with or without our awareness of it (Gherardi, 2001; Nicolini et al., 2003). This “practice
approach” understands organizations as systems of practices grounded in the tacit knowledge of
organizational members, which only becomes an object of reflection at moments of breakdown
(Gherardi, 2000).
The second strand is grounded in the multidisciplinary field of social memory studies (Olick
and Robbins, 1998) and conceptualizes organizational remembering and forgetting as “collective,
historically and culturally situated practices enacted by socially constituted persons in order to
establish meaning” (Feldman and Feldman, 2006: 880). This view aims at understanding how
memories are created, reactivated, and discarded. In addition, this perspective highlights the role
of history in organizations. For instance, Suddaby et al. (2010) coined the concept of “rhetorical
history” in opposition to an objective view of the past. Rhetorical history is understood as the
Coraiola and Murcia 231

ability of managers and organizations to use claims about the past in order to serve a myriad of
organizational goals (e.g. identity creation, managing strategic change, and renegotiation of the
past) and create competitive advantages (Foster et al., 2017).
Yet the 1990s also witnessed several OM contributions departing from functionalism and inter-
pretivism, drawing our attention to the role of politics and power dynamics in organizations
(Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). This third paradigmatic alternative, which we labeled as critical,
aimed at providing a relativist and politically radical account of OM-related phenomena. Drawing
from wide-ranging intellectual influences, such as post-modernism, post-structuralism, and post-
colonialism, critical scholars highlight the negative, contradictory, unpremeditated, and power-
dominance aspects latent in OM thinking (Fournier and Grey, 2000). For instance, ANTi-History
(Durepos et al., 2008a; Durepos and Mills, 2012) uses actor–network theory (ANT) to conceptual-
ize organizational history as a product of the politics of actor–networks who perform their past.
Others have emphasized the pervasiveness of ignorance in modern society and organizations
(Alvesson and Spicer, 2012; McGoey, 2012).
In the forthcoming section, we examine the contrasts among OM communities in terms of their
onto-epistemological compromises.

Onto-epistemological compromises of each community

Onto-epistemological compromises bestow a scholarly community with a distinct worldview on
organizations and inform an active stream of conceptual and empirical research (McKinley et al.,
1999). Ontology denotes the set of assumptions a community holds with regard to the essence of
the entities under study (Lewis and Kelemen, 2002). Epistemology, in turn, refers to how commu-
nity members understand a phenomena of interest, and to which forms of knowledge are consid-
ered to be “scientific” (Gieryn, 1983).
Functionalism draws on an objective ontology by assuming reality as objective, independent of
cognition (Howell, 2012). Although it acknowledges that learning is socially mediated (Simon,
1991), this mediation has no impact on the essential quality of the world. Epistemologically speak-
ing, this paradigm embraces a post-positivist approach, relying on the analysis of phenomena from
a “mechanical” perspective and the use of empirical experimentation to find the truth (Burrell and
Morgan, 1979). Ultimately, functionalism seeks for cumulative representations of learning-related
phenomena (Van de Ven, 2007).
Functionalist researchers have looked at various levels of analysis. They have focused on the
mnemonics of individuals, groups, and organizations. However, boundedly rational, individual
learners have been the focal unit of analysis (Huber, 1991; Ren and Argote, 2011). In addition, their
paradigmatic focus (i.e. learning) is psychological in nature (Crossan et al., 2011).
On the other hand, interpretivism is ontologically subjective, assuming a socially constructed
reality that draws from inter-subjective experiences (Howell, 2012). Interpretive scholars reject the
positivist ideal of an impartial representation of social reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1966).
Furthermore, they tend to assume intervening influences of power and consensus when comparing
“truth” claims that stem from social practices of remembering and forgetting (Van de Ven, 2007).
The interpretive paradigm contests the primacy of individual learners by concentrating on col-
lectives as the focal unit of analysis (Feldman and Feldman, 2006). Collectives are made up of
social beings who construct their understanding of self and learn from social interaction in specific
contexts (Olick and Robbins, 1998). This way, the focus shifts from the individual’s psychology to
the sociological realm of collective phenomena (Rowlinson et al., 2010).
Finally, critical scholars stand in contrast, and sometimes overt opposition, to the assumptions
of functionalism and interpretivism. In fact, the critical community might be better understood as
232 Management Learning 51(2)

a “third-order” paradigm, based on post-structuralism, post-modernism, and post-colonialism as

defined by Hassard and Wolfram Cox (2013). Whereas our use of “critical” is somewhat contrary
to the separation between normative and critical research domains as proposed by Hassard and
Wolfram Cox (2013), it is premised on the area of Critical Management Studies and its paradig-
matic polyphony.
Given such polyphony, the meta-theoretical assumptions of critical scholars have been subject to
multiple characterizations (Fournier and Grey, 2000). Whereas some scholars have characterized
critical scholarship as ontologically objective —particularly, those streams of research influenced
by Habermasian philosophy (e.g. Johnson et al., 2006)—, we contend that critical scholars have
tended to be relativist in their ontology, to the extent that they consider that the nature of reality is
defined based on the position and lens adopted by the researcher (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2018).
Epistemology, in turn, has been predominantly relational (Cunliffe, 2009). Relationism focuses on
emergent relational interactions that are recursively intimated in the fluxing of human life and have
no intrinsic properties per se (Karataş-Özkan and Murphy, 2010). These onto-epistemological
compromises demand deconstructing human-centered definitions of the world (Hassard and
Wolfram Cox, 2013). They also require reflexive research methods (Czarniawska, 2016) that may
foster a greater awareness about the researcher in relation to its object, and the mutual constitution
between the two (Adler and Jermier, 2005).

Towards a dialogue among communities

After contrasting paradigmatic alternatives in OM, we now set out to examine avenues for dialogue
among its three communities. We build off the assumption that each community offers partial
answers to a multifaceted organizational life (Fabian, 2000; Syed et al., 2010). We follow Willmott
(1993a), as well as Hassard and Wolfram Cox (2013), in our analysis. Whereas Burrell and Morgan
(1979) assumed paradigmatic incommensurability among communities, Willmott, alongside
Hassard and Wolfram Cox, contend that a deeper reading of Thomas Khun’s work suggests that
there is no neutral language to fully flesh-out rival paradigms. However, there is a logically neces-
sary degree of commensurability. It is in this spirit that we rejoin their argument on paradigms
being incompatible, rather than incommensurable. Hence, dialogue among epistemic communities
is not only possible, but a necessary condition for theory development and innovation.
From here, we engage in boundary work by reflecting upon favored assumptions of each com-
munity, and identifying areas of connection and contradiction (Hassard, 1988; Zietsma and
Lawrence, 2010). Having established a shared context, knowledge gaps may emerge, suggesting
novel research avenues in OM (Lewis and Smith, 2014). We ground our analysis in three set of
themes that are closely aligned with the main paradigmatic focus of each community. These pertain
to learning and knowledge (functionalism), collective memory and history (interpretivism), and
ignorance and stupidity (critical), respectively. This analysis shall help us in shedding light into
how each tradition may contribute to one another, and to outline an agenda for future research.

Boundary work at the margins of functionalism: the role of learning and knowledge
Organizational learning and knowledge have been the centerpieces of functionalist research in
OM. Functionalist scholars have focused on understanding how organizations can manage learning
processes effectively in order to improve corporate performance (Vera et al., 2011). Organizational
learning has been conceptualized as changes in individuals’ cognition that lead to changes in
organizational behavior (Crossan et al., 1999; Huber, 1991). Organizational knowledge, in turn,
has been characterized as the by-product of learning, and its creation involves a continuous process
Coraiola and Murcia 233

of socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization through which individual knowl-

edge becomes collective (Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka et al., 2006). Such knowledge is then inscribed in
the organizational memory for future use. Organizational memory, in turn, entails the codification
of past facts and events, and the development of routines that can be retrieved more or less accu-
rately when the present requires it, allowing for more efficient organizational responses (Moorman
and Miner, 1998; Walsh and Ungson, 1991).
Several studies have also underscored the importance of simultaneous organizational unlearn-
ing, namely, the activity that involves intentionally discarding obsolete knowledge towards enhanc-
ing organizational performance (De Holan and Phillips, 2004; Tsang, 2008). Unlearning should not
be confounded with involuntary or unintentional loss of memory; instead, it is understood as sup-
porting processes of organizational change, re-learning, and innovation (Tsang and Zahra, 2008).
The basic logic for proposition pertains to the assumptions of bounded rationality and path-depend-
ency, under which organizations tend to re-use existing knowledge (Levinthal and March, 1993).
If obsolete knowledge is retained, then this may potentially hinder organizations’ ability to adapt
and change over time (Lavie et al., 2010).
In a similar fashion, critical scholars define learning as a process by which changes are brought
about in the way members see and behave in organizations (Williams, 2001). In contrast, they
characterize organizational knowledge as a reflection of power asymmetries between management
and workers (Adler et al., 2007), that is rhetorically claimed by managers to achieve authority and
control (Alvesson, 1993, 2001). In this way, critical scholars consider knowledge dynamics as
power dynamics that aim at establishing a “legitimate” body of managerial knowledge that repro-
duces social inequalities (Raelin, 2009).
Overall, despite their orthogonal emphasis (i.e. functionalist emphasizing positive or “bright”
outcomes, while critical scholars emphasize the “dark side”), both critical and functionalist com-
munities share a common interest on the implications of learning and knowledge for organizational
outcomes. Conversely, interpretivism offers a more dynamic conceptualization of these constructs.
From this perspective, knowledge is embedded in practice and exists as an ongoing process of
knowing (Gherardi, 2001). This suggests that knowledge is not static, and learning is neither the
transmission of knowledge among individuals, nor its inscription in organizational structures.
Instead, knowing is a transformative action through which both knower and knowledge are
co-constructed (Nicolini et al., 2003), across time and space, such that there is always an element
of novelty brought from the past to the present (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996). From this vantage
point organizational members engage in social practices that can either create a sense of continuity,
or renegotiate meanings and ways of doing things in different geographical and cultural contexts
(Feldman and Feldman, 2006).
Inter-paradigmatic dialogue may lead into interesting possibilities for future research where
critical and interpretive scholars may find insight in their functionalist counterparts. For instance,
critical scholars may draw on functionalist notions of learning and knowledge to analyze how non-
managerial and anti-corporate activist groups create, share, and preserve knowledge across time
and space (e.g. Choudry, 2015). In this way, the examination of power–legitimacy dynamics may
benefit from a deeper understanding of knowledge management practices as forms of resistance.
Interpretive scholars, on their part, have tended to assume that organizations use a past that is
already available to them, such that both the genesis and value of learning and knowledge are not
completely clear within this tradition. We thus believe that there is an opportunity to develop
criteria to assess which would be “useful” processes of knowing toward promoting desired organ-
izational outcomes. For example, Radcliffe’s (1999) study on how auditors negotiate professional
knowledge to enact efficiency provides an interesting path for future research. It shows how
actors construct and negotiate knowledge as “useful” in tandem to desired organizational and
234 Management Learning 51(2)

professional outcomes. Such approach may potentially inform novel theory connecting transla-
tion processes and specific outcomes of knowing in practice.

Boundary work at the margins of interpretivism: the role of memory and history
Interpretivism defines organizational memory as the process of reconstructing the past through
practices of remembering and forgetting that are specific to a particular social group, influenced by
its historically situated context (Feldman and Feldman, 2006). Thus, interpretivists move away
from a view of history and memory as “truthful” reconstructions (Coraiola et al., 2015), to consider
them as narrative constructions of the past, framed on present collective understandings and insti-
tutions (e.g. Suddaby et al., 2010). Emphasis is placed on actors’ capacity to reinterpret and reshape
the past in light of present goals and interests. In this vein, recent studies have examined the role
of social remembering and forgetting in responding to changing institutional pressures (Smith and
Simeone, 2017), developing organizational identity (Anteby and Molnar, 2012), and promoting
strategic change (Maclean et al., 2014). From this perspective, a distant past can be used to achieve
long-term outcomes such as organizational identity, legitimacy, and competitive advantage (Foster
et al., 2017).
In a similar fashion, the critical community characterizes memory and history as discourses
about the past. In particular, the ANTi-History approach challenges an extreme separation between
past and present and suggests that the past is constantly being recreated in the present (Durepos and
Mills, 2012). However, they go beyond mere narrative aspects to define history as an effect of
ongoing, albeit invisible sets of interacting actor–networks that often aim at legitimizing and natu-
ralizing privileges in the present. In other words, critical scholars understand history as performed
through interacting actor–networks whose relations over time become concealed to give the
impression of a “final product” (Durepos et al., 2008a). Furthermore, they challenge the interpre-
tive view of history as legitimated knowledge about the past, to account for potentially divergent
memories of unprivileged groups. For example, Bell (2012) finds that there might be substantial
differences in the way managers and workers understand and represent the closure of a factory.
In contrast, functionalist research often conflates memory with knowledge (Levitt and March,
1988), which is considered unambiguous and transferable (Eisenhardt and Santos, 2006). Memory
encodes knowledge of the past that can be described, measured, and assessed in its integrity and
“truthfulness” (Hatch and Schultz, 2017). Similarly, functionalism has tended to conflate history
with the past (Coraiola et al., 2015). From this perspective, the role of the past in organizations
would be that of “path-dependence,” whereby resources from the past that may be instrumental in
achieving competitive advantages can be made available through memory retrieval (Ren and
Argote, 2011). History, however, may exert a negative influence when obsolete routines forestall
adaptive change (Miller, 1990).
Overall, in comparison with the interpretive and critical perspectives, functionalism would offer
an overly static view of the past, according to which memory can be unproblematically retrieved
to address present organizational needs (Knudsen, 1995). This emphasis has created a bias toward
the recent past, which has precluded functionalist scholars from theorizing the connection between
organizational memory and more long-term strategic goals (Barney et al., 2011). Against this back-
drop, the assumption of separation between history and the past, subscribed by interpretive and
critical scholars alike, might offer new insight to functionalist researchers to engage with a more
distant past, and examine potentially non-overlapping dynamics between history and the past.
There might be important differences between the way organizations manage temporally distant
versus more recent knowledge, and the way the recent and distant past impact on organizational
performance. In addition, functionalist literature has warned against the development of “learning
Coraiola and Murcia 235

myopias” (Levinthal and March, 1993). That is, the tendency of some organizations to (re)use and
build upon things already known that may hamper the search for innovative solutions (Helfat and
Winter, 2011). In turn, interpretive scholars suggest that remembering has a creative side in which
artifacts are rediscovered, and ways of doing things are reconstructed (Hatch and Schultz, 2017).
In other words, the way the past is conceived may either create a sense of continuity or rupture with
the past (Ybema, 2014). In addition, how the past is remembered, vis-à-vis how it is historicized,
may also diverge with consequences for the way organizations are managed. Overall, a non-
definitive view of history and memory may offer insight on novel paths for organizations to break
away from sources of inertia.
There is also promising boundary work at the margins of the interpretive and critical communi-
ties. Previous interpretive research suggests that managers and organizations may reconstruct the
past to achieve specific goals (e.g. Wadhwani et al., 2018). However, studies acknowledge that
organizational remembering and forgetting takes place within a broader mnemonic community
(e.g. Coraiola et al., 2018), in which several stakeholders are usually involved in the process of
interpreting and retelling the past. This indicates that there would not be endless possibilities to
reshape history (e.g. Cailluet et al., 2018), such that future critical research may provide a more
elaborate set of boundary conditions, including an analysis on the limits to the manipulation of
history, the role of power and dominance in processes of remembering and forgetting, and why
some versions of history become more dominant than others (e.g. Durepos et al., 2008b). Inter-
community dialogue in this connection may pave the way toward the development of more ethical
and diverse perspectives about the past.

Boundary work at the margins of the critical community: the role of ignorance
and stupidity
Critical scholars embrace an emancipatory agenda that, through de-naturalization and reflexivity,
aims at uncovering what is hidden, silenced, and marginalized (Fournier and Grey, 2000). Critical
OM research is distinctive to the extent that it argues that ambiguity and uncertainty are the rule in
organizations, such that managerial focus in increasing knowledge and predictability could para-
doxically lead to a situation of increasing loss of critical reflection and absence of ideas (Willmott,
1993b). In this way, studies have focused on the role of functional stupidity and the political under-
pinnings of ignorance management practices, contendiding that these do not lie on a continuum
ranging from ignorance to knowledge and information, but they are distinct phenomena that, along
with concurrent practices of silencing, repressing, and discrediting, demand scholarly attention in
and of themselves (Blackman and Sadler-Smith, 2009).
Functional stupidity concerns how people in organizations may decide not to learn, and unre-
flexively reproduce unacknowledged representations of systems of dominance in place (Alvesson
and Spicer, 2012; Raelin, 2009). In turn, ignorance is argued to be strategically deployed by corpo-
rations, as an attempt to avoid responsibility and ensure organizational survival (McGoey, 2007).
Relatedly, Oreskes and Conway (2011) show how corporations may engage in the production of
doubt to obfuscate the truth regarding sensitive social issues.
The notion of stupidity holds promise to inform future functionalist research. Stupidity, as the
“organizationally-supported lack of reflexivity, substantive reasoning, and justification” (Alvesson
and Spicer, 2012: 1196), may provide certainty, regularity, and may be functional to maintaining
organizational order. As such, it differs from the functionalist conceptualization of stupidity as
something that needs to be eradicated and substituted by valuable knowledge (Grant, 1996).
Functionalists argue that over time knowledge may lose value, become outdated, and dysfunc-
tional. In other words, once it turns into stupidity, it may become costly and ineffective such that
236 Management Learning 51(2)

it should be discarded (Crossan and Berdrow, 2003). Against organizational stupidity, functionalists
put forward the notion of organizational unlearning (e.g. Tsang and Zahra, 2008). Contrary to this
view, however, critical scholars contend that stupidity does not necessarily lead to negative con-
sequences. Hence, a promising opportunity to advance functionalist research may concern the
examination of the connection between knowledge and stupidity, to the extent that different com-
binations of expert and stupid knowledge might be necessary to achieve efficiency and broader
organizational goals.
A similar argument can be made in relation to the concept of ignorance and interpretive research.
Interpretivists assume that people make sense of the world through collective processes of interpre-
tation that construct a shared reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). This suggests some similarity
in the way different actors apprehend the social world. In addition, new generations receive the
past as institutionalized knowledge. Arguably, people may experience different upbringings,
depending on the social groups in which they are socialized; however, it could be contended that
every process of translation and interpretation presupposees some level of ignorance about the
past. As argued by Durepos and Mills (2012), the socio-politics of actor–networks that gave rise to
the past are usually forgotten and might be substituted by a dominant agreed-upon version that
conceal other possible renderings of what happened from the collective consciousness. From a
critical perspective, notwithstanding, ignorance is also a constructed phenomenon that emerges
from the actions of specific players that may engage in silencing, repressing, or discrediting prac-
tices. Hence, a deeper understanding of the ways in which ignorance is created may enrich the
interpretive research agenda.

Conclusion
Our article analyzes how organizational scholars have approached the study of the past and how
the recognition of interlinked domains of thought might open new frontiers for future research. We
argue that scholars interested in the study of representations of the past constitute a distinct research
field that we term organizational mnemonics. This field is populated by three major communities
that we termed functionalist, interpretive, and critical. Whereas the dominance of the functionalist
approach may have relegated the other two communities to the fringes of the field, our article
addresses this shortcoming by providing equal footing to the approaches to OM.
Our contribution is threefold. First, we identify a common project that underlies epistemic
divides among functionalist, interpretive, and critical communities, in such a way that we are able
to redraw the boundaries that separated them and envision a common field of inquiry we labeled
Organizational Mnemonics. Second, our analysis highlights the importance of alternative perspec-
tives and a plural approach to the study of the past in MOS. The present work encourages reflexiv-
ity about divergent paradigm lenses to offer a more nuanced understanding about the multiple
facets that characterize organizational life. Redrawing the boundaries of the field might allow us to
reinvigorate it by bringing scholars closer together, facilitating cross-fertilization of ideas, and
hopefully fostering the development of deeper and better theories. Thus, we advocate for a more
inclusive and balanced approach to the study of OM. Third, we outline some avenues for future
research. We believe that reframing questions of learning and knowledge, memory and history, and
ignorance and stupidity may offer new insight for novel research within, between, and across com-
munities. Our conclusion is that OM has a bright and promising future.

Acknowledgements
The authors sincerely thank Guest Editor Rafael Alcadipani for his guidance and the three anonymous
reviewers for their valuable feedback.
Coraiola and Murcia 237

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs
Diego M Coraiola https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2292-627X
Maria Jose Murcia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8609-5634

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