Telling a Story to Share Knowledge: A Case Study of Agrifood Corporate Museum

Abstract

To respond to changes in the global competitive context, organizations must base their competitive advantage on the enhancement of new knowledge within production and decision-making processes. At the same time, the continuous processes of innovation and technological advancement define a higher rate of knowledge obsolescence. With these premises, organizations find themselves constantly introducing new knowledge into their processes and, at the same time, setting aside knowledge that has now become obsolete. Corporate museums represent organizations that collect organizational artifacts of a parent organization. The main theoretical contributions on the phenomenon of corporate museums have offered a focused contribution on the marketing and corporate communication perspective. In fact, there are few studies on corporate museums in knowledge management studies. From the theoretical perspective of knowledge management, corporate museums represent a place where the knowledge of a parent organization is collected and narrated through its organizational artefacts. This study aims to analyze corporate museums as a place for collecting, exploitation and transferring the organizational memory of a parent organisation. The study is based on the analysis of a case study. A corporate museum connected to the agrifood sector was analysed, through interviews and analysis of company documents. The findings of this study can be traced back to theoretical contributions and practical implications. From the perspective of theoretical contribution, this study analyzes the corporate museum as “ba”, or as a place for collecting and sharing knowledge. From the perspective of managerial implications, the results highlight that the corporate museum can take on a strategic role in the valorisation and diffusion of organizational memory. It follows that the museum can be considered as a BA capable of generating new knowledge and innovation to be transferred within the parent organization. The results of this study offer new theoretical and empirical contributions to studies on knowledge management, on the phenomenon of corporate museums linked to the agrifood sector. The agrifood sector has demonstrated a greater need to enhance and implement knowledge in its organizational processes, through mechanisms that take into consideration the peculiarities of the sector.