Over the last three decades, the growing interest in corporate heritage has profoundly reshaped the ways in which companies narrate their past. Within this broader framework, corporate storytelling has emerged as a key instrument for branding, reputation management, and stakeholder engagement (Balmer 2017). Narratives based on tradition, longevity, territorial embeddedness, and family continuity have become particularly central in sectors such as agri-food, where history is frequently mobilised as a marker of authenticity and quality, especially in the context of international competition and Made in Italy positioning (Napolitano 2016; Napolitano, Riviezzo and Garofano 2018). However, this increasing narrative exploitation of the past raises significant historiographical and archival concerns, especially when storytelling practices become detached from the documentary foundations of business history. As several scholars have noted, the current “narrative turn” risks transforming history into a flexible reservoir of symbolic elements, selectively mobilised to serve short-term marketing goals rather than long-term historical understanding (Han 2023).The analysis highlights a recurring paradox. On the one hand, companies increasingly recognise the strategic value of their past and invest in storytelling to differentiate their brands in saturated markets. On the other hand, this attention to heritage does not necessarily translate into a commitment to archival preservation. In many SMEs, corporate narratives are built primarily on oral memory, family recollections, visual materials, or symbolic references to tradition, while systematic archival work remains marginal or entirely absent. From a business history perspective, such practices raise several critical issues. First, the marginalisation of archival sources risks producing simplified and teleological reconstructions of corporate trajectories, smoothing over discontinuities, crises, and failures that are nevertheless integral to the historical experience of firms (Amatori and Colli 2011) This paper investigates the tensions between historical authenticity and narrative construction by focusing on the relationship between business archives, corporate storytelling, and heritage marketing. It adopts a business history perspective grounded in archival studies, arguing that the growing prominence of storytelling—while offering undeniable communicative opportunities—also poses concrete risks for the preservation, interpretation, and survival of business archives, particularly within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
Lo storytellingfra storia d'impresa ed heritage marketing. Alcune riflessioni
Ilaria Zilli
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2023-01-01
Abstract
Over the last three decades, the growing interest in corporate heritage has profoundly reshaped the ways in which companies narrate their past. Within this broader framework, corporate storytelling has emerged as a key instrument for branding, reputation management, and stakeholder engagement (Balmer 2017). Narratives based on tradition, longevity, territorial embeddedness, and family continuity have become particularly central in sectors such as agri-food, where history is frequently mobilised as a marker of authenticity and quality, especially in the context of international competition and Made in Italy positioning (Napolitano 2016; Napolitano, Riviezzo and Garofano 2018). However, this increasing narrative exploitation of the past raises significant historiographical and archival concerns, especially when storytelling practices become detached from the documentary foundations of business history. As several scholars have noted, the current “narrative turn” risks transforming history into a flexible reservoir of symbolic elements, selectively mobilised to serve short-term marketing goals rather than long-term historical understanding (Han 2023).The analysis highlights a recurring paradox. On the one hand, companies increasingly recognise the strategic value of their past and invest in storytelling to differentiate their brands in saturated markets. On the other hand, this attention to heritage does not necessarily translate into a commitment to archival preservation. In many SMEs, corporate narratives are built primarily on oral memory, family recollections, visual materials, or symbolic references to tradition, while systematic archival work remains marginal or entirely absent. From a business history perspective, such practices raise several critical issues. First, the marginalisation of archival sources risks producing simplified and teleological reconstructions of corporate trajectories, smoothing over discontinuities, crises, and failures that are nevertheless integral to the historical experience of firms (Amatori and Colli 2011) This paper investigates the tensions between historical authenticity and narrative construction by focusing on the relationship between business archives, corporate storytelling, and heritage marketing. It adopts a business history perspective grounded in archival studies, arguing that the growing prominence of storytelling—while offering undeniable communicative opportunities—also poses concrete risks for the preservation, interpretation, and survival of business archives, particularly within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
