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Enterprise & Society Enterprise & Society

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The Narrative Turn, Corporate Storytelling, and Oral History: Canada’s Petroleum Oral History Project and Truth and Reconciliation Commission Call to Action No. 92

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

JANIS THIESSEN
JANIS THIESSEN*
Affiliation:
Janis Thiessen is a professor of History at the University of Winnipeg, and the author of three books on oral history, business, and labor. My thanks to Christopher Kobrak, Alexander Freund, Kimberley Moore, Kent Davies, Scott Price, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts. Parts of this article were presented at the Association of Business Historians and Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte International Conference, Humboldt University, Berlin, in May 2016; and at the Canadian Business History Association Conference, “150 Years of Canadian Business History,” Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, in September 2017. E-mail: ja.thiessen@uwinnipeg.ca
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Abstract

As business historians embrace the narrative turn, they would do well to consider the opportunities provided by oral history. For-profit corporate storytellers offer one approach. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s call to action no. 92, however, offers a better one. This article explores the potential impact on business historians of the TRC, using the Petroleum Industry Oral History Project as an example.

Type
Special Section on Oral History
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 60 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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