The Castaways of Life?: A Study of Organizational Remembering within the Context of a Chilean Geriatric Hospital

2014. Journal Culture and Organization. Vol. 20, Nº 4, 288-306

Matias Sanfuentes A, Eduardo Acuña A

Abstract:

This paper explores the phenomenon of organizational memory within the context of a Chilean Geriatric Hospital that has undergone profound institutional transformations during the last 40 years. The effects of such transformations have reinforced an emphasis on progress at the expense of remembering and integrating the past of the institution as a hospice. The study reveals that this institutional past reverberates in the hospital's working dynamics, which contributes to generating confusion in collective identity, as well as to affect the accomplishment of primary tasks and people's well-being. Access to organizational memory is carried out by the registration of some members' remembering practices about the hospital's past, which are analysed through a hermeneutic method. The study is ethnographic and interpretative, and the recollection of data combines interviews, methods of observation, and the revision of documents.

Palabras claves: Organizational remembering; forgetting; memory; identity; change.

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