Accounting for organizational history is essential to any change process. We argue, however, that the intentional revision of that history also can be important. We treat history as malleable, because events and actions from the past are susceptible to reinterpretation as organizations try to align with the way they see themselves in the present and want to see themselves in the future.
Because change is a prospective, future‐oriented process, whereas sensemaking is a retrospective, past‐oriented process, making sense of the future requires an ability to envision the future as having already occurred, i.e. to think in the future perfect tense. We offer an initial conceptual exploration of organizational change from a revisionist history perspective that turns on future perfect thinking, a view that enlarges our conceptualization of the ways in which history affects organizational adaptation and change.
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GIOIA, Dennis A., CORLEY, Kevin G. and FABBRI, Tommaso, 2002. Revising the past (while thinking in the future perfect tense). Journal of Organizational Change Management. 1 January 2002. Vol. 15, no. 6, p. 622–634. DOI 10.1108/09534810210449532.
Lant and Shapira 72001) note that histories are usually produced by recording actions taken, rather than on actions not taken. In one sense, this is quite an insightful observation, implying that recorded histories tend to gloss over or ignore the actual processual struggles leading to organizational decisions and actions and also an observation that tacitly acknowledges the postmodern position that silences can be as informative as expressions). [⇒ Reden und Schweigen]
In another sense, however, Lant and Shapira's apparently obvious statement glides past the potentially more important observation that histories are only tenuously connected to decisions, actions and events, regardless of whether they actually took place.
Modern ``spin masters'' have a working awareness of this fact. We have become accustomed to the spinning of events in the political arena. Any political debate is now accompanied by immediate post hoc attempts by partisans to impart a preferred interpretation to words actually spoken or deeds actually done. This trend has become such an accepted part of political life that we would only be surprised if spinning were not involved.
Although the Reagan White House is regularly cited as bringing spin to the forefront of American politics 7Hertsgaard, 1988), President Clinton's resident spinner, Dick Morris, is most often credited with elevating spinning to an art form.
We have not, however, usually associated spinning with the organizational domain (shareholders' letters being a conspicuous exception). Yet, such a trend is already upon us in day-to-day corporate life, which is what led Fortune magazine to proclaim that ``Every CEO should have his own Dick Morris'' (Schrage, 1999). Two developments thus warrant attention. First, and most obvious, is the burgeoning role of spin in everyday corporate communication activities; second, and considerably less obvious, is the application of spin retrospectively in the form of revisionist history – in other words, the strategic use of a fictional past.
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Setting aside for the moment the obvious spinning frequently undertaken by organizations managing crises, revisions of history are actually a prevalent (if little noted) process in the life of organizations, their membership, and their leadership. Indeed, there are some interesting and informative pragmatic manifestations of this process as organizations become increasingly attuned to the need to manage the images they are projecting and the reputations they are trying to manage. Several demonstrative examples from two recent investigations are instructive. Gioia and Thomas (1996) reported revealing commentary by the executive vice-president of a major university who maintained that: ... if you tell people that your vision is that, in five, ten, or 15 years they will be seen as graduates of a great university, they will buy into it. As you go along from there, you deliver, and you deliver by images, by people's impressions of who they will have become.