Floating Ferraris: Visual, Material, and Historical Elements of Institutional Work

Abstract

In this paper, we explore how organizations integrate visual and material elements with rhetorical history as part of institutional work projects. We focus specifically on how organizations embrace contested, painful, or tainted historical events through the use of visual and material elements. Empirically, we draw on a series of oral history interviews and secondary sources to examine the work of Martin Litton and his organization Grand Canyon Dories to understand how naming each dory after a unique natural wonder that had been previously destroyed helped to build an army of citizen activists. We contribute to institutional theory by illustrating how unique types of visual and material elements can be used to simultaneously remember a painful past and protect an imagined environmental future. We also extend research on institutions and place, as a type of material element, by conceptualizing how places that have been previously destroyed can continue to endure through memories, visual experiences, and material objects. Finally, we contribute to the literature on rhetorical history by demonstrating how organizations can draw on exogenous historical accounts as a means to create strategic value from contested, painful, and tainted historical events.