Ian J. Walsh

Driving down memory lane: The influence of memories in a community following organizational demise

In this paper, we explain how defunct organizations influence the communities they leave behind through ongoing processes of communal memory work, a twofold social process through which members of collectives develop shared memories of a defunct organization and behaviorally engage with its mnemonic traces. We explore how individuals’ shared construal of their environment shapes their emotional orientation towards their past, which in turn gives rise to particular forms of memory work. We further show how communal memory work influences changes in an organization’s role in a community’s identity and members’ construal of their environment. We develop our theory through an analysis of a case study of South Bend, Indiana, in the 54 years following the closure of the Studebaker Corporation’s automotive factory in 1963. We close by discussing the implications of this work for memory scholarship.

Loyal after the end: Understanding organizational identification in the wake of failure:

Prestige has traditionally been viewed as a primary explanation for individuals’ identification with organizations. Yet there are clues in the literature that some individuals identify with organizations that have lost their prestige owing to failure. We use data from a survey of former employees of a defunct technology firm to test a proposed model of identification with failed organizations. We find that the extent to which the perceived identity of a failed organization fulfills former members’ self-enhancement and belongingness motives has a positive relationship with their identification with it. Identification, in turn, inclines former members to socially interact with each other and participate in alumni associations. Further qualitative analysis reveals the organizational identity work practices by which former members recast a failed organization’s identity in positive terms. These findings suggest the merit of relaxing assumptions about prestige as a necessary precursor to organizational identification, and augment scholarly understanding of the cognitive and relational mechanisms that facilitate individuals’ identification with organizations in the wake of events that injure their reputations.

All for the Best: The Generativity of Organizational Demise in a Geographic Community

In recent years the field of organizational change has given attention to investigating the processes involved in organizational demise and its implications for those affected by it. While this work has generally focused on the experience of former members of a defunct organization, organizational demise also represents a substantial occasion for sensemaking and action for the geographic communities in which a defunct organization once operated. This study examines how community members come to view an organization’s closing as a generative event through a case study of South Bend, Indiana in the ten years following the closure of the Studebaker automotive plant in 1963. We conducted a thematic analysis of archival records of this case, including newspaper articles, interview transcripts, books and corporate memos to develop a model that explains how community members construed Studebaker as a vitally important part of the community’s economic survival, dissociated themselves from the organization with th...