Presenter:  Res. Asst. Meltem Özge Özcanlı

Subject:  When Competitors Are Co-narrators: Contested Rhetorical Organizational History

Venue:   Güvercinlik Hall 

Date:     23.10.2019

Time:   15.00

Res. Asst. Meltem ÖZCANLI, received her MBA degree from Middle East Technical University in 2014. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University. She worked as a research assistant at Middle East Technical University, Department of Business Administration between 2012 and 2019, and undertook a period of dissertation research at Copenhagen Business School, Department of International Economics and Management, as a visiting scholar in 2018. She has started to work at Social Sciences University of Ankara, Department of Business Administration early in 2019.

About the Seminar:  This study addresses how rhetorical organizational history production unfolds when an external stakeholder features as a co-narrator. Using case study methodology, we focus on a relatively contemporary incident whereby the history of a political party was an active subject of investigation for its main rival. Analyzing the discourses deployed by the party leaders, we reveal that commissioning of rhetorical organizational histories is a multilayered process through which a competitor co-narrates a focal organization’s history while simultaneously legitimizing its engagement in the latter’s past and communicating this alternative narrative to the rival’s audience to delegitimate it. Our findings suggest the need for going beyond existing conceptualizations of rhetorical organizational history as an intra-organizational practice whereby managers selectively construct past events in the light of contemporaneous concerns and incorporating inter-organizational dynamics for a fuller understanding of the process of rhetorical history-making.