9  Construing Organizational Reality through Retrospection

The majority of respondents were well aware of the fact that the way AUDI AG operated had changed over the years of its existence. Knowledge about the corporate past not only enabled the workforce to craft representations of a time gone by; it also allowed them to make sense of the present (cf. Weick, 1995, 2006). The results of fieldwork indicated that a member’s historical consciousness determined his or her ability to seek meaningful explanations for how contingencies within the organization had played out. Historical consciousness was a precondition for understanding that the present was an outcome of past developments.

This chapter discusses how members of AUDI AG recollected elements ...

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