Repertoires of the corporate past: Explanation and framework. Introducing an integrated and dynamic perspective

Purpose– The repertories of the corporate past perspective is introduced and articulated and is placed with the corporate communications and corporate marketing domains. The framework consolidates and expands the comprehension of multifarious actualisations of the past as a corporate-level phenomenon. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach– A literature review, which draws on the extant corporate heritage literature within corporate marketing and corporate communications along with other salient perspectives within social sciences, is integrated into a conceptual framework of past-related corporate-level concepts. Findings– The paper advances the extant literature by making a distinction between instrumental and foundational past-related corporate-level concepts. A framework is introduced and articulated detailing seven different modes of referencing the past of an organisation: corporate past, corporate memory, corporate history, corporate tradition, corporate heritage, corporate nostalgia, and corporate provenance. Research limitations/implications– The paper clarifies the current state of this nascent field of corporate marketing and communication scholarship concerned with the historicity of corporate-level phenomena and advances the conceptual understanding of the multiple ways in which links with an organisation's past can be understood and scrutinised offering an integrated framework of seven conceptual lenses for future research. Practical implications– Managers, by more fully comprehending the repertoires of the corporate past, are, the authors argue, better placed to discern whether the past is of material benefit to their organisations. If so, the repertoires of the corporate past perspective may enable managers to more effectively manage, maintain, and capitalise on their organisation's past in multiple ways. Originality value– This paper is substantively informed by both the corporate heritage literature and the salient literature from the social sciences. The introduction of a repertoire of the corporate past framework, arguably, represents an important contribution to the domain.