Contextualizing Strategy through Historical Artifacts: Corporate Museums as Sources of Rhetorical Narratives

The emerging “historic turn” in strategy research includes studies of historical efforts to establish sustained competitive advantages, and studies of firms making use of history in their strategy-making. The distinction blurs, however, when considering the role of corporate museums and their professional skills in historical methods at the service of creating strategic continuity. We conducted case studies of six Italian corporate museums and their role for constructing contents with historic artifacts to convey strategic continuity, showing how corporate museums act as sources for rhetorical history. We found that museum staff weaves multiple yarns of meaning from the historical and strategic context of selected artifacts to forge contents that support strategic goal and context continuity. Our study shows corporate museums as being active at the service of functional and corporate strategy, defines the interplay between managers and museums for constructing strategic continuity with historic artifacts, and contributes to research on rhetorical history.