Finalist for the OMT Division Best Student Paper Award
Material objects and artefacts play an important role in the transmission and constitution of organizational and collective memories. Existing organizational memory studies primarily emphasize mnemonic devices' representational and semiotic aspects, overlooking their inherent materiality and relational dimensions within broader ecological contexts (within and between organizations). To shed light on this issue, I ask how the materiality of mnemonic devices shape and impact organizational mnemonic communities. Grounded in a qualitative inductive study of the heritage craft of gun making in Germany and Austria, this work uncovers the layered relational capacities of mnemonic devices—multimodal aesthetic richness, transferability, and cross-generational durability. Ultimately, this study contributes to advancing knowledge on mnemonic practices in a broader web of an organizational field by elucidating the intricate interplay between mnemonic devices and the communities they engender – across time and space.