Organizational Cultures of Remembrance

5  Purposes and Cultural Forms of Organizational Remembrance

At AUDI AG, ‘tradition’ was not ‘cultivated’ for the mere sake of looking back. The corporate history department was part of a commercial enterprise, and thus its activities were expected to contribute to business success in one way or another. While most activities carried out by the various business units of the company were meant to eventually result in selling more automobiles, ‘working’ the past served as a means to multiple ends. My research distilled seven purposes of official organizational remembrance, which will be discussed in this chapter. While they were not the only purposes the company pursued when recollecting its past, they proved to be the most prominent ones. They ...