Prof Michael Rowlinson PhD(Aston)

Inaugural Lecture given by Professor Michael Rowlinson

Audio Inaugural Lecture given by Professor Michael Rowlinson.wav
Video by request please email r.miller@qmul.ac.uk

Memory, History, Forgetting, and Organizations.

Companies are increasingly contracting out their heritage management to commercial consultancies such as the History Factory, which promises ‘measurable results for businesses by helping them capture, preserve and leverage their history’. Using research from a recently completed ESRC funded project on Corporate History, Narrative, and Business Knowledge, the lecture will explore the tensions between memory, history, and forgetting in organizations. There is often a darker side to the history of companies that they would prefer not to know about or to be able to forget, such as their involvement in war, slavery, or racism. And organizations engage in mnemonic efforts to enhance their legitimacy by exaggerating their antiquity through the social commemoration of "origins", such as anniversaries.

Michael Rowlinson is Professor of Organization Studies. He joined Queen Mary from London Metropolitan University in 2003, and since 2004 he has been Director of the rapidly expanding School of Business and Management. Under Professor Rowlinson’s Directorship the School has developed a distinctive historical orientation. He has published widely on historical themes in business and management and is a founding co-editor of Management & Organizational History, a new journal launched by SAGE in 2006.