DEPOSITED REMEMBRANCE: THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY AT THE EXTINCT BANCO DA LAVOURA (BANLAVOURA) DE MINAS GERAIS

This paper discusses the construction of organizational memory based on the analysis of the video Memória do Tempo produced in 1960 by BanLavoura de Minas Gerais. The video was produced to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the organization. As part of the action that we here call “an exercise of futurology”, documents and objects were locked with the video in an urn created for this purpose, which was opened in the year 2000, forty years after its closing. The organizational discourse registered in the movie was analyzed and so were the interviews that we conducted with BanLavoura’s former employees. The research relied on current debates founded in literature that focus on organizational identity and the construction of organizational memory. Based on those references, we discussed the intentionality that permeates the construction of certain record on memory and history, which seeks to represent the past of the organization. The result shows that organization managers intended to preserve the history and the memory of the organization, but not the complete history or any memory. Organization managers were not interested in registering failures or organizational weaknesses, or in building a history based on employees’ accounts, since they barely appear in the analyzed material. They wanted to bring to light things that could project a certain organizational identity and memories of how the past happened. Thus, memory becomes a subject of dispute and is actively constructed to help shape the way the organization is remembered. Only then, it could help to build a good organizational image before the workers and society. Although the studied bank no longer exists and therefore no longer harbors a community of “lavourenses”, this paper allows reflections on similar efforts in preserving (and constructing) a memory made by other organizations.

Organizational memory; Memory construction; History; Memory artifacts; BanLavoura.