| Abstract | An organization's past determines how we view that organization. But can we really trust publicly shared organizational pasts? Who gets to decide them? In this paper, I investigate the struggle for the collective memory of a former IT start- up; the ways in which powerful representatives of the former firm attempted to concoct a shared memory of the organization, and how former members of the organization attempted to resist such efforts. I illustrate that it is indeed possible for a powerful actor to manufacture a publicly shared collective memory of an organization, and highlight ways in which other actors - namely, former employees - attempted to resist the formation of such a memory. The study has implications for researchers and practitioners.
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