Corporations and commemoration: First world war remembrance, Lloyds TSB and the national memorial arboretum

Gough, Paul

Abstract

This paper explores the role of corporations and financial organisations in maintaining a memory of employees who have served during the wars of the 20th century. Focusing initially on memorial schemes devised by finance houses in the commemorative era after the Great War, the paper examines the emergence of a broader approach to organisational memory and the social construction of collective memory. Taking the Lloyds TSB finance group as a case study, the origins of the company's war memorial in central London are examined, and the recent attempts to re-locate a number of memorial objects and icons accumulated during the expansion of the group. This case study indicates how the social memory of an organisation might be understood through an appraisal of the monumental furniture that lives, often invisibly, within an organisation. The paper concludes with a number of questions concerning the nature of organisational memory when confronted with a history of merger and acquisition, and the difficulties in finding a commemorative site able to represent and safeguard these histories.

Citation

Gough, P. (2004). Corporations and commemoration: First world war remembrance, Lloyds TSB and the national memorial arboretum. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10(5), 435-455. https://doi.org/10.1080/1352725042000299054

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2004
• Deposit Date: Sep 13, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 2, 2016
• Journal: International Journal of Heritage Studies
• Print ISSN: 1352-7258
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-3610
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 435-455
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1352725042000299054
• Keywords: corporate memory, Lieux de memoires, Lloyds Bank, National Arboretum Alrewas, war memorials
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1064858
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1352725042000299054