Crisis, Credibility and Corporate History

This work sets out to review expectations and strategies of companies, academia, and the public about using company history for communication and marketing purposes in part to “redress the sometimes unconscious bias of some recent archival literature towards the public sector and especially central government” (p. ix). Twelve brief essays based on presentations by European marketing specialists, corporate archivists, and scholars at the Symposium of the International Council on Archives, Section on Business and Labour Archives (14–16 April 2013), discuss the role of corporate history in business, approaches to historiography, and interactions between business leaders, historians, and researchers. Using case studies of Maersk, Roche, Gunther Quandt Group, Toyota, and IBM, authors describe uses of records by businesses coping with challenging pasts and struggling to regain, retain, or improve credibility with employees, stakeholders, shareholders, and the public. Marketers and communications specialists preparing to celebrate a company anniversary may find helpful tips here. But while articles on historiography based on company and business records may be useful to historians, archivists, and archival educators, experienced corporate archivists will encounter little that is new or novel. And those who await the next comprehensive or forward-looking corporate archives treatise as successor to The Records of American Business, edited by James O'Toole,¹ must continue to wait.

Outlining basic themes, U.K. corporate and business consultant Jonathan Steffen begins by noting (too?) simply that a company's history is the key to the present, arguing that company mission statements not only should deliver identity and purpose for existence but also identify past mistakes, too often ignored because businesses today must talk about themselves constantly. Equally basic is Steffen's notion that corporate archivists support corporate history by presenting the traditional validated narrative of writings, exhibitions, and interactive museums, although he advocates that archivists use open curation to help companies represent their histories and works to the public. Dr. Clemens Wischermann, University of Constance, examines whether a company is better served by engaging an agent to write its history to scientific standards with free access to information and free rein in writing or by developing a company-created and controlled corporate marketing vehicle, opting for the former to create trust and integrity. Mini-case studies support his views. Created by a company-commissioned firm, Daimler-Benz's 1980s history failed to address its Nazi-era use of slave labor, resulting in a “national PR disaster,” although the ensuing public debate led Daimler-Benz to open its corporate archives to the public for the first time. Bertelsmann Company, by contrast, engaged an outside historian as author, establishing a trust relationship with unrestricted archival access, creating a book uninfluenced by the company, and enhancing Bertelsmann's transparency and reputation. Wischermann's focus on modern German history will resonate with some companies, especially those German companies having to publicly address their actions under the Nazi regime.

Writing about novel approaches to corporate history, Henning Morgen, head of Historical Archives at A. P. Moller-Maersk, illustrates Wischermann's dichotomy but concludes that he cannot be objective due to his company's values and the influence of its founding family and majority shareholder, although he can be “contextually accurate.” Dr. Lionel Loew of the Roche Historical Collection and Archive, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., also rejects objectivity as an author. Because the historian/researcher must “grant credit to all subjectivities” and is hampered “not only by his quest for objectivity and the truth but by his interest for social valorization and legitimation of his work” (p. 30), archivists should author their companies' histories. Archivists are best positioned to “discover and pass on previously unknown stories” and to “develop [their] own culture of the history of [their] company[ies]” (p. 32), a position that will seem anomalous to many archivists trained not as subject specialists but as professionals dedicated to providing access and support to those who are.

In a section entitled “Historical Writing: No More Tales of Heroes and Myths!,” University of Constance professor Thilo Jungkind applies social science theories to corporate history, noting that corporate actions thus are interpreted in context and the corporate archivist preserves the results of the company's actions and functioning. “This assigns to the archive and its curatorial tasks the crucial role of storing the important knowledge regarding the company's decision and perceptions thereof. Thus, company archives decide what expectations, if any, of the social environment were relevant to the way the company's actions were perceived in the historical context” (p. 48). This analysis is thoughtful but not particularly novel. Dr. Birgitte Possing of the Danish National Archives describes the biographer's power and “the biographical turn” or how the “overwhelming presence of biography has rendered it a kind of compass for human life” (p. 53). Asking which way of telling a life is right or wrong, the author outlines biographical archetypes, challenges, and ethics, noting the role of private archives in assisting the biographer. Finally, also in this section, University of Bonn professor Joachim Scholtyseck demonstrates how information uncovered during independent research into Nazi-era activities allowed the family-owned Gunther Quandt Group to confront its history, gain a different perspective on the role of its leadership, and ultimately collect and donate company records to external archives open to public scrutiny, as a step toward credibility with university academics and the public. Use of historical records in dealing with “crises” may resonate somewhat differently for archivists and historians who work with German businesses coming to terms with their difficult histories of cooperating with the Third Reich than it does with North American archival audiences.

Examining topics of scientific credibility and getting the message across in company history, Dr. Karl-Peter Ellerbrock, director of the Stiftung Westphälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, describes how German regional business archives, “a peculiarity of the German archival situation” (p. 77), provide a “plurality of perspectives” (p. 80) on regional economic history by collecting records of federal offices, corporations, private companies, and economic organizations and associations. Added benefits are increased networking and scientific work in company records, better partnering of archivists with companies, and establishment of formal educational partnerships with local schools. The author illustrates his article with examples of how a declining industry might recover based on exploration of its past, how a German business coped with Nazi-era forced labor in its past, and how a family business dealt with generational conflict.

Thomas Inglin's premise is simple: businesses should celebrate anniversaries through more than a printed jubilee book. Inglin, head of Corporate Archives, Zurich Insurance Company, advocates an integrated approach to understanding organizational heritage through storytelling. The process, plan, and results delivered by the History Factory for Zurich's 150th anniversary yielded a digital archive (previously nonexistent), an anniversary intranet page, company history exhibits, self-appointed employee anniversary “ambassadors,” and a marketing campaign with blogs, tweets, and media advertising and community outreach programs for employees. The author provides illustrations and encouraging documentation of increased employee participation, interest, and engagement with company history, but does not break much new ground, especially for corporate archivists who participate in similar events at their own companies, as did former IBM corporate archivist Paul Lasewicz concerning IBM's 2011 centennial. Lasewicz, however, provides new ideas and directions for business historians and corporate archivists. He analyzes the strategic value of corporate history and heritage, focusing on the “path dependency” economic theory in writing history, namely that an organization's current position cannot be fully understood unless its past is understood. As he describes, path dependency is flawed in viewing organizational history as “just facts,” leading to a restrictive (and often, ossified) vision of corporate culture. Critics instead frame the discussion as an intersection of history, organizational activity, and documentation that yields “heritage” or a thematic story deliberately and selectively culled from a company's larger pool of historical facts, interpreted, and curated to reach specific constituencies, supporting organizational messages and agendas. This, Lasewicz suggests, produces intangible, but quantifiable assets to the business and the archives, and, as the IBM story demonstrates, allows the corporate archivist to add great value to the enterprise.

Finally, Yuko Matsuzaki, business archives specialist, Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation, describes the seventy-five years of Toyota history in terms of the traditional Japanese company history, or shashi, which are primarily public relations vehicles. For years, shashi comprised mainly lists of business activities in chronological order created by nonprofessional employee groups that disbanded when the shashi were published. In the mid-1960s, business historians who focused on companies' decision-making processes began to produce scientific shashi resembling business school case studies. Now shashi are used by stakeholders to help identify and share common values, corporate cultures, and philosophies among global workforces, and to publicly disclose corporate information. The author views the future role of corporate archives in Japan as “shared and valued within the company as a management resource [that] will also increase collaboration among in-house corporate archives, properly trained archival professionals, professional groups providing training opportunities, and other providers” (p. 139).

For historians, students of historiography, and archival educators, this volume may provide useful information on how businesses view their histories and how archivists may contribute. Marketers will benefit from information about company anniversaries. For corporate archivists, it may validate past training and current experiences, but provide few new ideas.