rekindling the flame: processes of … scholars have paid attention to the processes underlying...

REKINDLING THE FLAME:PROCESSES OF IDENTITY RESURRECTION

JENNIFER HOWARD-GRENVILLEUniversity of Oregon

MATTHEW L. METZGERUniversity of Colorado at Colorado Springs

ALAN D. MEYERUniversity of Oregon

We build theory on the process of collective identity resurrection through a qualitativestudy investigating how community members reenergized a valued community iden-tity following years of decline. Our findings suggest a recursive model of identityresurrection, in which community leaders marshal tangible resources such as moneyand human talent to orchestrate experiences and community members authenticatethe experiences by judging them resonant with memories and existing identity sym-bols. This model draws attention to the role of experience and emotion in identityprocesses, extending theory that has tended to focus narrowly on cognitive aspects ofcollective identity. We discuss implications for processes of identity reproduction andresurrection in organizational settings, and for interdependencies between communityand organizational identities.

When I got back, Apple had forgotten who we were.Remember that “Think Different” ad campaign weran (featuring great innovators like Einstein, Gan-dhi). . . . It was certainly for customers, but it waseven more for Apple. That ad was to remind us ofwho our heroes are and who we are. Companiessometimes do forget. Fortunately we woke up.-Steve Jobs, on returning as Apple’s CEO after morethan a decade’s absence (Jobs, 2004)

The birth of track and field [in this community] . . .was organic and when it died and withered away,bringing it back was going to be difficult.-Community resident, commenting on the resurrec-tion of Track Town U.S.A.

Collective identities, as expressions of “who weare,” can profoundly shape the actions of the mem-

bers, prospective members, and outside audiences ofan organization. Organizations’ identities influencehow their members interpret strategic issues, respondto threats, and undertake change or retrenchment(Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Fiol, 2002; Gioia, Schultz,& Corley, 2000; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). Regionalcommunity identities attract entrepreneurs and firms(Freeman & Audia, 2006; Romanelli & Khessina,2005), shape local norms and social structures thatimprint distinctive organizational practices (Chiles,Meyer, & Hench, 2004; Galaskiewicz, 1997; Marquis,Glynn, & Davis, 2007), and impart a unique experi-ence of place (Gieryn, 2000; Molotch, Freudenburg, &Paulsen, 2000). Collective identities are frequentlyregarded as persistent. Because “a collective identityprovides a sense of self and meaning . . . a certaindegree of inertia is not only inevitable, but desirable”(Ashforth & Mael, 1996: 52–53).

But what happens when a collective identityfades? Can it be resurrected? As the opening quotessuggest, both companies and communities sufferidentity decline, and some seek to reclaim whatwas lost. Apple is a notable example, but motorcy-cle manufacturer Harley Davidson also spent over adecade offering products that were not true to itscorporate self before executives rescued it fromnear “extinction” in 1983 (Fournier & Lee, 2009:105). Lego plumbed the depths of its 75-year his-tory, restoring the central idea of play, in its 2004turnaround (Schultz & Hernes, 2010). Organiza-

The authors are grateful for the valuable suggestions ofguest editor Ann Langley and three anonymous AMJreviewers. Kathryn Aten, Kim Elsbach, Mary Ann Glynn,Davide Ravasi, Paul Roline, Patricia Thornton, and DaveWhetten offered helpful comments on earlier versions ofthis article. We gratefully acknowledge the financial sup-port of Pat and Stephanie Kilkenny and the James War-saw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Ore-gon’s Lundquist College of Business. The authors extendspecial thanks to Janet and Tom Heinonen, Bill Dellinger,Vin Lananna, and our many other informants in TrackTown, U.S.A.

� Academy of Management Journal2013, Vol. 56, No. 1, 113–136.http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0778

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tional scholars have paid attention to the processesunderlying identity change (Corley & Gioia, 2004;Dutton & Dukerich, 1991) and more recently havebuilt theory on identity maintenance (Ravasi &Phillips, 2011) and its periodic regeneration (Birn-holtz, Cohen, & Hoch, 2007; Foreman & Parent,2008). Yet identity resurrection following a periodof decline remains an undertheorized process. Re-cent work calls for more attention to how a collec-tive entity responds when it recognizes that “we arenot what we used to be” (Ravasi & Phillips, 2011:127). By studying the decline and resurgence of acommunity identity, we build theory on the pro-cesses of collective identity resurrection. A regionalcommunity offers an “extreme case” for building the-ory about identity resurrection (Eisenhardt, 1989) be-cause top-down leadership, a key source of continu-ity and renewal for organizational identities(Whetten, 2006), may be weak or absent in commu-nities (King, Felin, & Whetten, 2010).

Our study was guided by the research question:How do actors resurrect a collective identity? Wefocus on the identity of Eugene, Oregon, a commu-nity that garnered the label “Track Town U.S.A.”while hosting the 1972 U.S. Olympic Track andField Trials. Eugene was home to a rich history ofmagnificent track and field performances, a storiedcoach known as much for starting the country’sjogging craze as he was for cofounding Nike, and aspirited young runner, Steve Prefontaine (“Pre”),who simultaneously held every American track re-cord between the distances of 2,000 and 10,000meters. Community members spoke of how theseelements had coalesced into a distinct identity, say-ing “Track Town” represented “who we are in thiscommunity.”

Yet by the late 2000s, the moniker Track TownU.S.A. evoked little more than a nostalgic yearning.The local newspaper reported that some “ques-tioned whether Eugene could legitimately still callitself ‘Track Town U.S.A.’” (McDonald, 2009).Three decades had elapsed since Pre’s tragic deathin 1975, and the University of Oregon (UO) had notgarnered a national track and field title since 1985.The image of Bill Bowerman, UO’s legendary coachand Nike’s cofounder, was frozen in a bronze statueat Hayward Field—holding a stopwatch in onehand, his foot resting on his wife Barbara’s storiedwaffle iron, which Bill used as the mold to cast thesole for Nike’s prototype “Waffle Trainer” runningshoe. In 2008, the return of the U.S. Olympic Trackand Field Trials to Eugene offered the community achance to reclaim its identity, although some fearedthe event would trade cheaply on cherishedmemories.

To build theory on collective identity resurrec-tion, we gathered data from interviews, observa-tions, and archives that captured historical andcontemporary aspects of Eugene’s identity as TrackTown. In probing the puzzle of resurrection, wediscovered that actors’ experiences and emotionalinvolvement perpetuate a collective identity andplay a central role in its resurrection. Our processmodel describes how organizational and commu-nity leaders orchestrate experiences designed tosustain an identity and how members can authen-ticate these experiences as resonant with a remem-bered and symbolized past. By developing our pro-cess model over three distinct eras, we explain howleaders’ enactment of (or failure to enact) specificprocesses triggers (or fails to trigger) authenticity,leading to identity decline, threat, or resurrection.

This work makes three main contributions. First,we develop a process model of collective identityresurrection that can apply to both organizationsand communities. Resurrection demands leaderswho are astutely aware of a symbolized and remem-bered past and members who have “tended theembers” of that past during the period of decline.Second, we theorize that experience and emotioncan be central to identity reproduction and resur-rection. Identity has been criticized as a “narrowlycognitive, linguistic . . . construct” (Harquail &Wilcox King, 2010: 1621) that becomes manifest inleaders’ claims and members’ understandings(Ravasi & Schultz, 2006; Whetten, 2006). Our anal-ysis suggests that although identity certainly isclaimed and understood, it is also is lived and felt.Experience and emotional involvement bring a pastidentity into the present by activating narratives orsymbols, infusing them with meaning for newlyrecruited members. Experiences and emotions “re-load” the symbolic memory bank by adding freshaccounts and new memories that become futureidentity referents.

Our third contribution is to extend the literatureon community influences on organizations and or-ganizing practices, which so far has foregroundedeconomic (Freeman & Audia, 2006; Romanelli &Khessina, 2005) and social structural (Marquis,2003) explanations. We argue that a place-basedconfiguration of human inhabitants, experiencedemotions, sagas, and symbols can coalesce to trans-form a region into a beloved place steeped in sym-bolic meanings. Closer attention to this aspect ofcommunity identity can yield insight into how in-teractions between communities and organizationsgenerate and transform meanings (Marquis & Batti-lana, 2009).

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COMMUNITIES, IDENTITIES, AND PROCESSESOF CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Regional communities are place-based socialunits that supply the contexts for the firms, volun-tary organizations, social movements, and individ-uals who are located within them. For certain sortsof organizations, a community identity is an innatecomponent of organizational identity. For instance,the organizational identities of city governments,hospitals, and universities are inextricably fusedwith the identities of their geographic regions.Other organizations opt in voluntarily, recognizingthat a regional identity offers unique resources thatcan be harnessed for organizational purposes (Ro-manelli & Khessina, 2005). Despite considerableattention to the influence of community identity onorganizational action (Cowen & Cowen, 2010;Glynn, 2008; Marquis, 2003; Marquis et al., 2007;Romanelli & Khessina, 2005), little is known abouthow community identities arise and evolve.

To build theory on identity resurrection at thecommunity level, we borrow from the literature onidentity continuity and change in organizations(Corley & Gioia, 2004; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991;Fiol, 2002; Gioia et al., 2000; Ravasi & Schultz,2006). Because identity conveys both the distinc-tiveness and coherence of an entity, it is a constructthat “travel[s] easily across levels of analysis” (Al-bert, Ashforth, & Dutton, 2000: 13). Communities,like organizations, exhibit distinctive characteris-tics that persist over time (Chiles et al., 2004; Free-man & Audia, 2006; Marquis & Battilana, 2009;Molotch et al., 2000). The distinctiveness of com-munities becomes encoded in labels that character-ize clusters of economic activity (Freeman & Audia,2006; Romanelli & Khessina, 2005), localized socialnorms (Galaskiewicz, 1997; Glynn, 2008; Marquis,2003; Saxenian, 1996), physical features (Brehm,Eisenhauer, & Krannich, 2006; Gieryn, 2000), orcombinations of these factors (Chiles et al., 2004;Molotch et al., 2000).

In another parallel to organizational identity, resi-dents and indigenous organizations often cast thedistinctiveness of a community in a positive light,advancing descriptors such as Branson, Missouri’s“All-American wholesomeness” (Chiles et al., 2004)or Atlanta, Georgia’s “entrepreneurial and opportu-nistic spirit” (Glynn, 2008). However, these claimsmust persuade audiences who assess their fidelity inlight of actual community features (Romanelli &Khessina, 2005: 345). Thus, popular acceptance of acommunity’s identity, much like that of an organiza-tion’s identity, depends on achieving some fidelitybetween the claims of community leaders and the

beliefs of members and nonmembers (Dutton & Duke-rich, 1991; Hsu & Hannan, 2005).

Despite these functional similarities between or-ganizational and community identity, which sug-gest the appropriateness of borrowing theory be-tween levels of analysis (Whetten, Felin, & King,2009), questions remain about the extent to whichcommunity identities exhibit continuity versuschange, and the mechanisms through which actorsmight influence each trajectory. On one hand, com-munity identity is portrayed as highly persistentand “resistant to purposeful change” (Marquis &Davis, 2008: 462). Localized social norms (Glynn,2008), patterns of interorganizational relationships(Galaskiewicz, 1997; Marquis, 2003), and length ofresidency (Flaherty & Brown, 2010) all contributeto persistence of a community identity, suggestingthat members tend to perpetuate, rather than alter,identities. On the other hand, communities lack“sovereignty” as entities, and their members are“not constrained by strict roles and hierarchicalcontrol” (King et al., 2010: 298), suggesting thatleaders’ actions may be needed to prevent loss ofsalience of an identity. The organizational identityliterature has long considered how members andleaders contribute to identity continuity andchange. We use its insights to inform identity res-urrection processes at the community level.

THE ROLE OF AGENCY IN IDENTITYCONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Organizational identity has been regarded as rel-atively persistent (Ashforth & Mael, 1996), dis-rupted and reasserted or revised only when exter-nal audiences question an identity (Dutton &Dukerich, 1991) or leaders seek to reorient it (Cor-ley & Gioia, 2004; Fiol, 2002). Recent accounts in-stead assert that organizational identity must beactively maintained (Ravasi & Phillips, 2011) andportray identity as an ongoing accomplishmentarising from leaders’ and members’ actions (Gioia,Price, Hamilton, & Thomas, 2010; Ravasi & Schultz,2006). Such accounts combine two formerly dispa-rate perspectives on identity. The social actor per-spective attributes identity continuity to the persis-tence of identity claims (Whetten, 2006) often“expressed as institutionalized mission statements,policies, and routines” (King et al., 2010: 295).These claims specify appropriate behavior to mem-bers and convey core attributes to external audi-ences (Whetten & Mackey, 2002). Leaders, particu-larly founding leaders, are central to establishingand perpetuating identity claims. The social con-structionist perspective asserts that identity is per-

2013 115Howard-Grenville, Metzger, and Meyer

petuated by identity understandings sustained bymembers and derived from their everyday organi-zational experiences (Gioia et al., 2000).

In each perspective, cognitive processes are cen-tral to how actors perpetuate identity (Ravasi &Schultz, 2006). In the social actor perspective, lead-er-driven “sensegiving,” an attempt to shape oth-ers’ interpretations, is a primary mechanismthrough which identity claims are established(Whetten & Mackey, 2002). In the social construc-tionist perspective, member “sensemaking” under-lies the construction of identity understandings(Gioia et al., 2000). Recent empirical work observesthat sensegiving and sensemaking can “generate anembedded dynamic” (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006: 436)that is “mutually recursive and constitutive” (Gioiaet al., 2010: 6) when identity claims and understand-ings coincide, suggesting that identity perpetuationhas a “structurational” character (Sewell, 1992).

The cognitive mechanisms of sensegiving andsensemaking can perpetuate an identity, but, aswith other structurational processes, may yield out-comes that vary according to exactly how and un-der what contextual conditions the mechanisms areenacted (Feldman, 2004). Indeed, identity changehas also been found to result from leader sensegiv-ing and member sensemaking. Leaders or managerscan revamp an organization’s identity throughclaims that attempt to realign it with changes inexternal expectations (Chreim, 2005), organiza-tional forms (Corley & Gioia, 2004), or strategicdirections (Fiol, 2002; Tripsas, 2009). Althoughleaders occupy privileged positions as sensegivers,these claims must be “socially validated” by mem-bers (Ashforth & Mael, 1996: 39) who may rejectidentity claims that are seen as too different fromtheir understandings (Reger, Gustafson, Demarie, &Mullan, 1994). Alternatively, members may insti-gate identity change when they reinterpret andeven change the labels and meanings associatedwith an organization’s identity (Corley & Gioia,2004). However, such potential changes must reso-nate with externally validated claims to coalesce inbroadly shared understandings (Gioia et al., 2010).

RESTARTING IDENTITY PROCESSES

We focus on a case in which the structurationalmechanisms of identity continuity and potentialchange have broken down. We use the term “iden-tity decline” to describe such a condition. Identitydecline occurs when identity claims and under-standings gradually lose salience, as a result of notbeing actively asserted or experienced. This differsfrom “identity drift,” which refers to a form ofidentity change arising from the gradual misalign-

ment of traditional claims with new understand-ings, beliefs, or practices (Albert & Whetten, 1995)and which can be addressed by managers selec-tively revising claims to fit the new understandings(Ravasi & Phillips, 2011). What mechanisms canreactivate identity-perpetuating processes after de-cline? Are the cognitive mechanisms of sensegivingand sensemaking sufficient, and, if so, how are theyenacted? Studies of episodic or “iterative” organi-zations—such as summer camps (Birnholtz et al.,2007), sporting contests (e.g., the Olympic Games),or other event-driven organizations (e.g., Academyof Management meetings)—offer clues to this the-oretical puzzle (Foreman & Parent, 2008). In eachinstance, leaders play a primary role in regenerat-ing an identity. In the case of a summer camp,regeneration is fairly straightforward: identities aretypically reenacted by incumbent leaders in thesame facilities and geographic location. In othercases, regeneration is harder, as when leaders andmembers change, venues change, or longer periodsof latency elapse (e.g., the Olympic Games). Undersuch circumstances, creating an identity for eachepisode calls for a process better designated “re-creation” than regeneration.

In other circumstances, such top-down sensegiv-ing efforts may be less warranted or less effective inregenerating an identity because members them-selves do not turn over or because artifacts, tradi-tions, or narratives take on enough symbolic impor-tance (Dacin & Dacin, 2008; Gieryn, 2000; Glynn,2008) to “provide the raw material for identity for-mation” (Weber & Dacin, 2011: 294). In some set-tings, members of an organization cling to symbolsor collective memories in efforts to reclaim a legacyidentity (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006; Schultz & Hernes,2010), even in the extreme case, in which the or-ganization no longer exists (Walsh & Glynn, 2008).

Understanding how community identity is resur-rected therefore demands attention to leader andmember actions and how these actions referenceand recreate aspects of identity that are remem-bered and symbolized, as well as those that areepisodically regenerated. Our analysis led us to aprocess model that captures the interactions be-tween member and leader actions in resurrectingidentity and at the same time augments the pre-dominantly cognitive understanding of each actor’srole in processes of identity continuity and change.

METHODS

Research Setting

Eugene, Oregon, is well suited to building pro-cess theory on the resurrection of a community


identity. Eugene’s identity as Track Town has beenwidely recognized by outsiders and insiders sincethe early 1970s, allowing us to collect data coveringthe lengthy period that preceded resurrection ef-forts. We designed the research as a longitudinalcase study to capture historical dynamics and tooka multimethod approach. We conducted in-depth,semistructured interviews with central figures whoparticipated personally in Track Town’s rise, fall,and resurrection. Additional primary data were ob-

tained through brief structured interviews andthrough our naturalistic observation of actors,events, and performances during the resurrectionperiod. We supplemented these sources with sec-ondary data providing further insight into the his-torical development of Track Town’s identity, in-cluding archived documents, journalistic accounts,and personal memoirs. Multiple data sources en-abled “triangulation” of our observations. Datasources and uses are summarized in Table 1.

TABLE 1Description of Data

Data Types and Dates Amount and Location Use in Analysis

Primary DataNaturalistic observation2008 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials,

Hayward Field (June 27–July 6)Eight competition days, many

shorter events (HaywardField)

Participant observation during the turning point inresurrection of Eugene’s identity as Track Town U.S.A.

Spectator attendance at NCAA andUSA Track & Field meets (March2006–April 2011)

25� meets (Hayward Field) Participant observation yielding insight into athlete-fanconnection.

Running in Eugene Marathon and 10Kroad races (2005–11)

Two half-marathons, five10Ks (Eugene)

Participant observation yielding insight into “livedexperience” of running in Track Town.

Interviews24 semistructured interviews, lasting

between 45 minutes and two hours(April 4, 2008–November 15, 2010)

211 pages of text (verbatimtranscriptions fromaudiotape)

Insight into actions and beliefs of current and former UO trackand field coaches, athletes, Olympic Trials organizers, OregonTrack Club officers, sports journalists, local residents.

366 structured interviews withresidents, fans, and athletes (June25–30, 2008)

338 pages of text transcribedfrom written andaudiotaped responses(airport and Fan Festival)

Identification of symbolic referents (“carriers”) of TrackTown identity (people, places, and objects). Interviewees’emotional reactions to the idea of Track Town.

Secondary DataUO Athletic Department documents

and displaysRecords of NCAA-sponsored track and

field events (1984–2010)Annual statistics (UO

campus)Assess performance of UO track and field athletes over time,

assess community/fan interest in terms of meet attendance.Historical timeline listing pivotal

events and accomplishments(1900–2009)

Hall of Champions (UOcampus)

Temporal bracketing of eras in Track Town’s history.

Newspaper articlesAll articles in four newspapers

(campus, local, and regional) aboutcollegiate or postcollegiate track andfield (January 1991–December 2010)

335 articles/sports columns(accessed online)

Determine press coverage and interpretation of track and fieldover time. Coded to assess frequency of the term “TrackTown.”

Bowerman papersBill Bowerman’s personal papers:

correspondence, notes, memoranda(1932–99).

43 linear feet of archiveddocuments (UO KnightLibrary)

Identify strategies and actions undertaken to promote UOtrack and field and boost community involvement.

Book-length memoirsBowerman and the Men of Oregon

(Moore, 2006)Out of Nowhere (Hollister, 2008)

Two volumes Contextualize data in narrative accounts of Oregon trackand field.

Documentary filmsFire on the Track: The Steve

Prefontaine Story (ChambersProductions, 1995)

60-minute video Insight into Steve Prefontaine’s life and accomplishments.

Oregon Experience (Oregon PublicBroadcasting, 2011)

30-minute video Insight into Bill Bowerman’s life and accomplishments.


Data Collection

In-depth semistructured interviews. Key infor-mants were nominated by university athletic depart-ment officials, the local newspaper’s sports editor,university archivists, and other expert observers. Werecruited 24 informants, several of whom we inter-viewed in tandem,1 and two of whom we interviewedon two occasions. Our informants included currentand former UO track coaches, former athletes, localsports reporters, officers of the Oregon Track Club (avoluntary organization that supports amateur andprofessional runners and local events), historians,track meet organizers, and representatives of thecounty’s visitors bureau. We conducted and audio-taped semistructured face-to-face interviews withthese informants, each lasting between 45 minutesand two hours. We asked all informants to reflect andcomment on the meaning of “Track Town,” the ori-gins of the phrase, and the key events and actorslinked with it and also asked them to identify sym-bols they associated with the Track Town identity.We asked them to relate how and why Eugene’s iden-tity as Track Town changed over time, what events orforces they regarded as responsible for changes, andfor specific comments on whether and how the iden-tity was regenerating. Other questions were tailoredto each informant’s specific role. When transcribed,these interviews comprised 211 pages of single-spaced text.

Brief structured interviews. We developed abrief structured interview instrument to assess howresidents, fans, and athletes understood and artic-ulated the Track Town identity. We trained under-graduate students to conduct and audiotape theseinterviews. During the 2008 Olympic Trials, wedispatched our student interviewers to the localairport and to the site of a “Fan Festival” heldadjacent to the event venue (Hayward Field). Weworked alongside the students to survey 366 infor-mants. Interviewers obtained demographic infor-mation and ascertained whether an informant wasan athlete, an avid track fan, or a casual spectator.They then asked informants if they had heard theterm “Track Town” and to describe what it meantto them. Next, informants were handed printedlists enumerating specific people, places, andthings said to symbolize Eugene’s identity as TrackTown. For each list, informants were asked to rank-

order items’ centrality to the idea of Track Townand to reflect and elaborate upon the basis of theirrankings. These interviews typically lasted be-tween five and ten minutes. We entered infor-mants’ rankings into a spreadsheet for analysis andtranscribed the audiorecordings of their remarks.

Naturalistic observation. We worked as volun-teers at the 2008 Olympic Trials and attended over25 other track meets sponsored in Eugene by NCAAor USA Track & Field.2 We ourselves trained oncity trails and streets and ran in local road races.We attended and audiorecorded lectures, panel dis-cussions, and a Bach Festival concert premieringmusic composed in honor of Coach Bill Bowerman.We visited historically significant sites includingHayward Field, Pre’s Trail (a bark running trailwhose construction was championed by Steve Pre-fontaine), and Pre’s Rock (the site of the auto crashin which he died) and took photographs. Theseactivities let us engage dozens of track fans in con-versation, observe how athletes and visitors inter-acted with sites and physical artifacts (e.g., placingmementos at Pre’s Rock), and observe interactionsbetween athletes and community members (e.g., atpanel discussions).

Archival data. We obtained extensive documen-tary data from collections maintained by the UOlibrary, the UO Athletic Department, and the Ore-gon Track Club. These sources yielded memoirs,correspondence, and personal records of formercoaches and administrators, newspaper clippingsand articles from sports magazines, membershipand governance records maintained by the OregonTrack Club, and selected audio and visual record-ings. We obtained program booklets distributed atsignature track meets, read nonfiction literary ac-counts, and viewed and selectively transcribed di-alogue from filmed documentaries.

Data Analysis

We analyzed our data in line with the customaryapproach to building grounded theory (Glaser &Strauss, 1967), as elaborated by Langley (1999), toinclude sensemaking strategies termed “ground-ing,” “organizing,” and “replicating.” Groundedtheory techniques were invoked first, to induce keythemes, events, and symbols that seemed to adhereto and explicate the Track Town identity. As Lan-

1 We interviewed two married couples together, andtwo other pairs of individuals who collaborated in orga-nizing the Olympic Trials or other major events. Not onlywas it convenient to interview them together, but wegained valuable information as each was able to feed offthe other’s insights, elaborate, and clarify details.

2 The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)organizes the athletic programs of most of the majorcolleges and universities in the United States. USA Track& Field is the national governing body for the sport oftrack and field.


gley (1999) and Meyer (1991) recommended, wedeveloped visual maps to theoretically frame andorganize our data. We met regularly to discuss andassimilate embryonic ideas and to compare ideasemerging from our data with constructs in the iden-tity literature. Throughout this process, we re-turned to the archives and to the field to gatheradditional data that could corroborate or elaborateour emerging lines of sight. The concept of authen-ticity surfaced early in our analyses, for it featuredprominently in informants’ accounts of Eugene’strack and field history, in their explanations for thedecline of the Track Town identity, and in thehopes and fears they expressed about Track Town’sresurrection. However, it was initially unclear ex-actly what role authenticity played in the commu-nity’s identity processes. Another early observationwas the unexpected frequency and depth of emo-tional content in informants’ responses to our fac-tual questions. Accordingly, we noted the analyti-cal promise of the twin constructs of emotion andauthenticity, holding onto our hunch that theywere significant (Locke, Golden-Biddle, & Feld-man, 2008) while continuing to work back andforth between these and other emerging constructsand our various data sets.

We deepened our understanding of the emer-gence of the Track Town identity and its essence bycreating graphic and tabular displays to reducedata. All three authors studied transcripts of thesemistructured interviews, adding potential codesin the margins. This process generated over 100emergent codes, which, through discussion, wecondensed to those that captured critical aspects ofactors, causal relationships between actors andevents, and potential mechanisms underlying iden-tity creation, decline, and resurrection. To facilitateformal coding and focus primarily on mechanisms,we further refined our list of codes, distilling out aset of 33. Interview data and selected archival ma-terials3 were imported into the qualitative dataanalysis program Atlas.ti. These data were codedby two authors, with the third reviewing them forreliability.

Coding alerted us to the importance of specificidentity referents and to the classes of actors thatreferenced, connected, or produced such referents.

Following Glynn (2008), we initially used Scott’s(2003) term “carriers” as a sensitizing concept torefer to symbols, ideas, events, and people thatappeared to help the identity “move from place toplace and time to time” (Scott, 2003: 879). Scottdistinguishes carriers of four types—symbolic sys-tems, relational systems, routines, and artifacts(2003). Whereas the term “carriers” connoteslargely inanimate receptacles for identity contentand referents, our developing understanding of theresurrection process led us to regard identity aspropelled by both tangible and intangible resourcesthat agents draw into use, and by experiences thatregenerate identity-relevant understandings andemotions. Intangible resources in our analysis in-clude symbols and relational systems (defined as“connections between actors, including both indi-vidual and collective actors” [Scott, 2003: 886])that are tapped and regenerated through experi-ences. Tangible resources (financial, human, andphysical) also fuel the generation of experiences,which in turn attract further tangible resources.

We noted the centrality of particular groups andindividuals to the resurrection of the Track Townidentity and saw that different sorts of individualsleveraged different kinds of resources in craftingvarious experiences. In particular, we noted therole of organizational and community leaders inmarshaling tangible resources and the role of com-munity members as guardians of intangible re-sources. Whereas earlier work has suggested thatmembers often play the role of identity changeagents, we observed that certain community mem-bers actively and tenaciously conserved and pro-tected the identity. Following Dacin and Dacin(2008: 330), whose work on tradition applies theterm “custodians” to those who are “exemplars orpractitioners of a given tradition,” we coined theterm identity custodian to refer to an actor whofocuses attention, invests time, and exerts energy inan effort to sustain a collective identity.

As we continued to work iteratively between ourdata and the identity literature, we converged upona process model that depicts how key actors (lead-ers and identity custodians) perpetuate or resurrecta community identity by drawing on tangible andintangible resources and generating orchestratedand ongoing experiences that authentically repro-duce a symbolized and remembered identity. Weperformed a final round of coding to alter, merge,and elaborate earlier codes as we developed thismodel. We returned to our data to examine how thevarious mechanisms in our model had been en-acted at different stages in Track Town’s history,allowing us to link these enactments to the identityoutcomes of decline, threat, and resurrection. To

3 The sheer quantity of and formats of some of thearchival data made it unrealistic to include all secondarysources in the Atlas.ti file. For example, Bowerman’srecords were stored in hard copies retrievable only viathe help of an archivist at the UO library. We perusedthese files and, with the assistance of a student re-searcher, photocopied select sources, and summarizedinformation from others in an Excel spreadsheet.


set the stage for a full delineation of our model, wenow relate the essence of the Track Town identity.

THE DECLINE AND RESURRECTIONOF TRACK TOWN

As noted earlier, by the early 1970s the city ofEugene had witnessed legendary athletic perfor-mances and was home to a storied coach, Bill Bow-erman, and an accomplished and charismatic youngrunner, Steve Prefontaine. However, Track Town’sunique character transcended any specific individualor performance. Track Town’s distinctiveness wasforged by two processes: (1) community engagementin the sport, as reflected in the relational system thatconnected the city’s elites, residents, fans, and ath-letes, and (2) a sustained pattern of events that culti-vated a unique track and field experience in Eugeneand elicited a spirited emotional response from resi-dents, fans, and athletes.

A powerful bond connected Eugene’s residents tothe sport of track and field, with community mem-bers deeply engaged as fans, volunteers, and even asparticipants. This bond had been forged early in thetenure of Bill Bowerman, who, according to one in-terviewee, was revered for winning, but “was moreknown for his . . . ability to motivate and unify [the]community.” Bowerman’s abiding influences on thecommunity’s relational systems include the forma-tion of the Oregon Track Club, “All-Comers Meets,”and jogging clinics open to the public.

In the 1950s, Bowerman helped found the OregonTrack Club (OTC), a volunteer organization that orga-nized, publicized, and officiated locally held trackmeets. One interviewee noted that OTC offered morethan just a means to coordinate volunteers for Bow-erman; rather, it was “his way to bring in people fromthe community and get them on board. Find the mov-ers and shakers. Find the people with the bucks.”Others remarked that the OTC offered Bowerman away to co-opt the community’s social elite, notingthat Bowerman would “have the vice president of thebank as the starter, with the mayor and his son hold-ing the [finish line] tape.”

Bowerman also created opportunities for com-munity members to attend Hayward Field, the uni-versity’s track and field stadium, to compete inweekly meets, the All-Comers Meets, and to learnabout and engage in the newfangled practice ofjogging. One resident who moved to Eugene in the1970s recalled that competing at the All-ComersMeets became “just a part of the local fabric” andthat the jogging clinics were so successful and un-precedented in the U.S. that the magazine Life senta photographer to document this “bizarre” phe-nomenon (Moore, 2006). Bowerman used Hayward

Field to anchor all of these events, insisting that it“be a community facility and not just a UO facility,open to the public for use.”

As a result of these actions, Eugene’s residentsbecame renowned for their knowledge of track andfield and emotional connection to the sport. Oneformer coach noted, “From the time I first got here,it was clear that the people in the stands under-stood the sport. . . . They knew what a good miletime was and what a good half-mile time was.” Theconnection went beyond a cognitive one. As a for-mer UO runner put it, “It’s 11 or 12 thousand peoplewho absolutely understand. It’s not an academic un-derstanding, it’s an emotional understanding. It’sjoining in and screaming [athletes] on to goodness.”One interviewee noted that the confluence of thiscommunity-wide education and enthusiasm createda “self-fulfilling prophecy that [athletes] expected tobe treated well here” and as that reputation grew,more athletes came to perform.

By the time Steve Prefontaine, arrived at UO in1969, the community was primed to be captivatedby his brash, no-holds-barred running style andathletic accomplishments, which included sevenNCAA titles and numerous American records. Anathlete recalled:

It was a very spiritual experience to watch Pre run.That’s why he packed the stands in Eugene andeverywhere else. [People would] watch Pre run andthey’d go away feeling better about themselves. . . .He showed each of us the best that’s within all of us.

Another recalled how he would “watch thecrowd somehow get energized by [Pre]” and said,“When he’d race . . . you kind of ran with him. Itwas an incredible feeling.” The 1972 U.S. Trackand Field Olympic Trials showcased Eugene’s pas-sion for Pre and the sport of track and field to therest of the country, captivating outsiders and givingthem a glimpse of the relational fabric and experi-ences that underpinned the identity. An inter-viewee observed:

The 1972 Trials were . . . the perfect storm in a way.Bowerman was the Olympic Coach and [his] ath-letes were very well represented in the Trials. Eu-gene had been a jogging center for probably ten yearsby that time, so Bowerman had created thecrowd. . . . The newspaper covered it as I have neverseen the sport covered before. People went awaytalking about Eugene being Track Town.

Building on this momentum, the community con-tinued to attract both large-scale events (the OlympicTrials returned in 1976 and 1980) and individualathletes (who moved to Eugene to live and train).Thus, it initially seems hard to understand the de-cline that subsequently set in. Although much of the


literature on community identity calls attention todurable social structures and norms or persistent un-derstandings of a community’s distinctive features,the circumstances surrounding Eugene’s identity de-cline suggest that these accounts might underestimatethe need for identities to be periodically, or evencontinuously, refueled.

A PROCESS MODEL OF IDENTITYREPRODUCTION

Our process model discloses how communityidentity is reproduced through the actions of spe-cific types of actors. We first discuss the more gen-eral process of identity reproduction before show-ing how the model and processes are alteredthrough specific enactments, enabling resurrectionor other outcomes. At its core, our model capturesthe interactions between tangible and intangibleresources and lived experiences; identity inheres inand is propelled by these interactions. As shown inFigure 1, stocks of tangible resources (top of figure)are marshaled by organizational and communityleaders4 to produce “orchestrated experiences.” In

our case, orchestrated experiences include trackand field events that may be locally organized bycommunity or university leaders, or larger eventsthat require these parties to coordinate with exter-nal organizations (e.g., USA Track and Field, theUS Olympic Committee). Through their roles informal organizations (e.g., the UO, Nike, eventmanagement companies), leaders access tangiblefinancial resources (money needed to bid on andstage events), human resources (skilled athletesand ardent volunteers), and physical resources(Hayward Field and other infrastructure). Asshown in the figure’s central boxes, these orches-trated experiences offer opportunities for identityreproduction by showcasing athletic performancesand eliciting emotional responses from fans andspectators. Responses to these orchestrated experi-ences, however, rely also on other experiences thatenable observers to interpret their meanings, imbuethem with significance, and ultimately regeneratethe intangible symbolic and relational resourcesthat propel the identity forward in time.

As shown in the lower portion of the figure, a“pool” of intangible resources includes symbolicresources (stories, media accounts, statues, and me-morials) and relational systems (connections be-tween custodians, residents, fans, and athletes) that

4 We use the term “leaders” to refer to those in formalorganizational or community roles that enable their incum-bents to access and organize tangible resources. In an or-ganizational setting and in the identity literature these in-dividuals might be termed “managers.” In each case, werecognize that such individuals also draw on and manipu-

late symbolic resources, and we note the effectiveness ofspecific leaders in these roles as we discuss our findings.

FIGURE 1Process Model of Identity Reproduction

Stocks ofTangible

Resources

Members’Lived

Experiences

Pools ofIntangibleResources

• Financial resources• Human resources• Physical resources


• Symbols• Relational systems

• Symbols• Relational systems

OngoingExperiences

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resources

Custodians tapintangibles, enroll

residents, and modelbehavior

Custodians tapintangibles, enroll

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capture past expressions of the identity. To repro-duce an identity, both identity custodians and lead-ers use these resources. Custodians leverage themin two particularly important ways. First, custodi-ans tap symbols and relational systems as theyeffectuate “ongoing experiences,” (see the broadarrow running through the middle of the figure).Ongoing experiences are differentiated from or-chestrated experiences because they are producedfrom the bottom up, typically by volunteers, re-quire no formal external sanction, and occur morefrequently and repetitively. Such experiences en-roll members who may only weakly identify withthe collective identity and deepen their investmentin it. Second, identity custodians tap symbols andactivate and build relational systems when theymodel behavior during orchestrated experiences. Inour case, identity custodians, through their roles asspectators or volunteers at events, helped residentslearn how to be Track Town fans—for instance,when and how to clap rhythmically as an athleteruns down the long jump track, or how to check thewind speed meter before celebrating the establish-ment of a new record. Such participatory experi-ences prime residents and new fans to respondappropriately, cognitively and emotionally, to per-formances at orchestrated experiences. In this way,just as Bowerman had “created the crowd” whenthe Track Town identity was forming, custodianshelped reproduce the identity by modeling behav-ior and, through this, rewove a relational systemthat connected residents, fans, and athletes. Astuteleaders can also tap the intangible resources thatcarry the traces of a past identity, as we discussbelow in distinguishing identity resurrection fromidentity reproduction.

A final, but crucial process for identity reproduc-tion is authentication, represented as a circle inFigure 1. Custodians, fans, and residents who aresteeped in the identity through their prior partici-pation authenticate (or fail to authenticate) the con-tent and emotional tenor of orchestrated experi-ences. Authentication checks for and affirmsresonance between a remembered, symbolizedidentity and present experiences. Authentication islived and felt, rather than calculated and analyzed,and it occurs during, not after, participation inexperiences. The words of an interviewee arrivingat the Eugene airport days before the ’08 Trialscaptured this, as he puzzled over the importance ofvarious people, places, and things to Eugene’sTrack Town identity and concluded, with tearswelling in his eyes, that:

There’s something else I’d sure like to figure out,and I’m sure you would like to figure out too, [which

is] why is it that the citizens of this town . . . getgoose bumps [sitting at Hayward Field]. Becausethat’s what Track Town is—Track Town is the roarof fans as much as it is any of that other stuff. I don’tknow [why], but it is.

Similarly, a UO archivist reflected on how, shortlyafter moving to Eugene, she had puzzled over thelarge number of people who came in looking for ma-terial on track and field. Only after she attended amajor track meet (upon the urging of a student re-searcher) did she feel she “got it,” explaining, “I nowthink I understand it . . . [attending a meet] is notexactly a religious experience, but close to it.” It is theshared emotional response to an orchestrated experi-ence, not simply shared attendance, that deepens res-idents’ and fans’ understanding of symbols, bringingthe past into the present (“This must be what it feltlike to watch Pre run!”).

At the same time, authentication regenerates in-tangible symbolic resources by reloading the poolwith new stories, images, records, or memories.Authentication rejuvenates relational systems, asresidents who began as casual spectators becomefans, and it forges fresh ties as up-and-coming ath-letes connect personally with fans, residents, andcustodians. These regenerating mechanisms (de-picted by the arrow leading from authentication tothe lower box in Figure 1) propel current identity-relevant experiences into the future by embeddingthem in reinvigorated symbols and relationships.Finally, authentication also enables leaders to at-tract the tangible resources (new athletic talent,money, and sponsorship) needed to stage futureorchestrated experiences (as depicted in the arrowleading from authentication to the upper box inFigure 1).

To portray the recurring nature of these pro-cesses and the central role of authentication as a“stage gate” between cycles, Figure 1 depicts twocycles progressing over time. The regeneration ofresources creates new opportunities for leadersto marshal tangible resources and opportunitiesfor custodians as well as leaders to tap intangibleresources in staging orchestrated and ongoingexperiences. Both sets of actors—and both typesof experiences—are crucial to the model, sinceleft untended, resources do not endure or auto-matically trigger experiences and emotionalresponses.

Next, to illustrate the dynamics of our processmodel, we map it onto three distinct eras, punctu-ated by UO coaching changes, that accompaniedthe waning and waxing of Track Town’s identity.The University of Oregon was recognized by inter-viewees as being “at the core” of the organizations


that were critical to the Track Town identity, withthe UO track and field coach serving as the pivotalleader. Under three coaches, the identity declined,was undermined in a way that blocked its repro-duction, and finally was resurrected.

IDENTITY INERTIA AND ITS LIMITS:DELLINGER ERA

Shortly after the ’72 Olympic Trials cementedEugene’s identity as Track Town, two eventsabruptly drained much of the momentum. BillBowerman unexpectedly retired from his coachingrole in 1973 to devote his efforts towards the fund-ing and construction of UO facility improvements.Three years later, hours after his 38th race at Hay-ward Field, Steve Prefontaine died in a single-caraccident, just blocks from the UO campus. Theenergy each had infused into Track Town lasted fora time under new coach Bill Dellinger, a former UOrunner and Bowerman’s assistant coach. But by1998, 25 years after Dellinger took over as coach,the consensus was that to call Eugene Track Townwas to drift into nostalgia. As one interviewee said,“We just weren’t making it happen . . . through thelate 1980s and all the way through the 1990s . . . wewere not the track capital of the world.”

By the end of Dellinger’s long career, the identitywas no longer being adequately refueled throughinjections of tangible resources, resulting in holloworchestrated experiences that elicited diminishedemotional responses. As the relational system with-ered, symbols of the identity were not renewed,and tangible resources grew harder to attract. Forsimplicity, we depict the Dellinger era as a singlecycle of the model, but a more complete analysiswould track multiple cycles showing these mecha-nisms reinforcing each other over time. We repre-sent the end result in Figure 2 as a reduction intangible resources (depicted by the shrinking sizeof this box) and a depletion of symbols and rela-tional systems (depicted by the downward slope inthe line representing the level in the pool of intan-gible resources).

Marshaling Tangible Resources, OrchestratingExperiences, and Eliciting Emotions

Early in his coaching career, Dellinger continuedmarshaling tangible resources by tapping into thevestigial Track Town identity, as sustained by BillBowerman’s continuing involvement in the com-munity. Bowerman spearheaded Eugene’s success-ful bid for the 1976 Trials, carrying on the hosting

FIGURE 2Identity Decline, Threat, and Resurrectiona

Ongoing

Experiences Ongoing

Experiences Ongoing

Experiences


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• Symbols

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during ’72 OlympicTrials to draw athletes

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and model behavior at’76 and ’80 Trials

Authentic butuninspiring

experiences reduceinflow of athletes and

financial support

Dwindling number andintensity of authentic

experiences slowsregeneration of intangible

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Smith recruitsathletes for sprints

and field events,not distance events

Custodiansangered andalienated by

Smith’s affront tosymbols andrelationships

Inauthenticexperiences curtailinflow of financial

support

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memories and stories andsever connections

between athletes andresidents

Lanannaspearheads winning

bid to host 2008Olympic Trials:

recruits new athletictalent to UO and city

Custodiansrally, revitalize,and recruit fans

1973 1998 2005 2011Lananna Era: Identity Resurrection

Smith Era: Identity Threat

Dellinger Era: Identity Decline

a The sizes of boxes, circles, and fonts reflect the quantities of tangible resources; orchestrated experiences’ success in showcasingathletic performances and eliciting emotional responses, and the extent of authentication generated. The width of arrows in the figuredepicts flows of resources, and the thick horizontal line near the bottom of the figure depicts the changing depth of pools of intangibleresources.


of track’s premiere orchestrated experience. Pre’slegacy endured and continued to attract athletes totrain at UO. One remarked, “I still wanted to go. Iknew that [Dellinger] was still there and so I felt ifhe had brought Pre to that level then maybe hecould help bring me to my full potential.” Simi-larly, Eugene continued to lure postcollegiate ath-letes, with one interviewee noting that the concen-tration of these athletes “peaked in the early 80’s[with about] 60 Olympians training . . . for the 1984Olympics.” These tangible resources bolstered Del-linger’s and other community leaders’ orchestra-tion of the 1976 and 1980 Olympic Trials.

The staging of the 1980 Trials, however, markeda turning point. In part, this resulted from the U.S.boycott of 1980 Moscow Olympics, an event be-yond the community’s control. One intervieweenoted that even though Eugene residents “tried todo the right thing” and turned out in force for the“Trials to Nowhere,” the feel of the event was “kindof hollow” because everyone knew the winnerscould not compete in the actual Olympic Games.The 1980 Trials were by and large judged as au-thentic by veteran fans, but this was more by de-fault than design. One noted, “Dellinger took it forgranted that this is the way it was. There was neverany great effort to promote [Track Town as an iden-tity]. [He felt] it’s always been that way in Eugeneand it was always going to be that way.” Dellingermaintained Bowerman’s practice of recruiting mid-dle distance runners and showcasing them locally,but the quality of the UO teams began to decline.The former women’s coach put it bluntly: “Wewere crummy, all through the ’90s.” Figure 3 (bot-tom) shows a significant dip in the women’s teamperformance during that time, and a similar butshorter-lived dip in that of the men’s team, basedon placement in the PAC-10 meet, an annual ten-college conference championship.5

Failure to Attract New Tangible Resources

The degraded emotional responses to orches-trated events slowed the inflow of tangible re-sources that Dellinger and other community lead-ers could leverage. One interviewee observed thatbeginning in the mid 1980s, “There was a steadydecline” in resident postcollegiate athletes as run-ners started to train elsewhere. Dellinger’s ability tomarshal resources was curtailed further by NCAA

regulatory changes that transformed Hayward Fieldinto an outdated track, diminishing the value ofthis physical resource with a stroke of the pen. Oneinterviewee explained, “It wasn’t a championshiptrack anymore,” because the new rules had ren-dered it too “skinny and narrow” to host sanc-tioned events. Another noted, “It was fine in 1980,but by 1987 it was unusable.” The solution was towiden the track by moving back the distinctivecovered wooden grandstand that ran its length. In-terviewees recalled the laborious grassroots effortneeded to raise money to move the grandstand, asby then UO athletic department, community, andmajor donor interest had waned.

Tapping While Failing to Regenerate IntangibleResources

The decline in tangible resources was accompa-nied by a depletion of intangible resources. Early inDellinger’s era, the relational system and symbolsremained robust. One interviewee reflected that“Dellinger, really because he was a nice guy, auto-matically connected to the community, and be-cause he worked with Bowerman, by association,it . . . carried over.” However, even Dellinger ac-knowledged the difficulty of living up to his pre-decessor, noting shortly after his hiring, “There isno way for me to ever be Bill Bowerman. I can onlybe Bill Dellinger carrying on the lessons and legacyof Bowerman” (Moore, 2006: 309). Others observedthat Dellinger was less able than his predecessor totap and sustain the relational system that con-nected community residents to his athletes and thesport. One said, “I love him as an individual but . . .Dellinger wasn’t the same sort of promoter andcommunity guru that Bill Bowerman was—so themomentum started running down towards the endof Bill Dellinger’s career.”

Critically, other identity custodians responded tothis eroding leadership and the diminished qualityof orchestrated experiences by curtailing their ownefforts to perpetuate the Track Town identity. Oneformer UO runner recalled that it grew hard tomodel behavior and enroll others in the identity:“We didn’t hold many events and when we did, noone showed up for them. I mean, even I had to dragmyself to [meets] because there was no energy.”Generational turnover magnified this attrition. Onelong-time track and field supporter recalled feelingthat “time was running out” to engage the nextgeneration in Track Town’s identity, explainingthat “if a hard-core track fan like me has to draghimself to Hayward Field . . . why would my kidsbe interested in going?” Not surprisingly, the ensu-ing generation failed to assume leadership posi-

5 Athletic department administrators at the UO con-sider the team’s performance in the Pacific-10 Confer-ence (Pac-10) to be the most accurate gauge of the pro-gram’s overall success from year to year.


tions in organizations such as the Oregon TrackClub that had become so central to producing on-going experiences by tapping past symbols and re-lational systems. Many interviewees spoke of the UOrunners from the 70s and 80s as the “lost generation,”that “just went away instead of being right in themiddle of things, as you’d expect they would.” Onenoted that in the latter years of Dellinger’s career,“there just wasn’t a high-powered organization withpeople interested in track and field.”

By the late 1990s, Track Town’s demise seemedall but assured. Still, interviewees spoke of the“embers” that continued to be tended and fannedduring this period by certain custodians. Severalpointed to the “Pre Classic,” an annual track meetthat continued to bring world-class athletes to Eu-gene and gave credit to its local organizer for or-chestrating experiences that “help[ed] us hold on towhat we had . . . so we were reminded every yearhow great it was.” Other custodians worked tire-

FIGURE 3Hayward Field Attendance and University of Oregon’s Placement in the Pacific-10 Conference’s Track and

Field Championship Meeta

Men’s Team Pac-10 PlacementWomen’s Team Pac-10 Placement

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a The solid line combines the attendance figures of four annual track and field events at Hayward Field (missing attendance figures wereinterpolated from the years immediately before and after the omission). The gray bars represent the attendance for NCAA Outdoor Trackand Field Championships held at Hayward Field during the period that data were available for the annual events.


lessly to protect important symbols of the identity;one interviewee recalled “jogathons” and other ef-forts that volunteers mounted to raise money andawareness to protect Hayward Field from deterio-ration and to relocate its iconic east grandstand.Many nonresidents clung to Eugene’s identity asTrack Town as well. A visitor center staff memberrecalled:

While [residents] were feeling disconnected from thatlegacy, the people who [visited] here—people whoreally are into track and field—the flames never diedout for those folks. So we would get questions aboutPre’s Rock and people would go to Hayward Field andrun on the track . . . . A frequent question at our visitorcenter was how to get to those iconic places.

In summary, the Dellinger era illustrates thegradual “running down” of a collective identitywhen it is not actively tended by leaders or custo-dians. In the words of one interviewee, the decline“wasn’t obvious, it just sort of happened.” In 1998,Bill Dellinger’s retirement brought a new coach tothe position, and the UO teams’ performances be-gan to improve considerably (see the bottom ofFigure 3). However, as we elaborate next, this wasnot enough to reenergize the identity.

IDENTITY THREAT AND THE TRIGGERING OFRESURRECTION: SMITH ERA

The centrality of experience and emotion to theTrack Town identity is perhaps best illustrated byevents that began unfolding in 1998. The actions ofthe new track coach, Martin Smith, sent the alreadyanemic process of marshaling tangible resourcesinto a tailspin and shattered the authenticity ofparticipants’ experiences. More serious were ac-tions that tarnished the symbols and weakened therelational system that Track Town’s identity drewupon. Together, the breakdown of these leader-driven and custodian-stewarded processes eliciteda backlash that turned into a groundswell. Figure 2represents the breakdown of the mechanisms ofmarshaling tangible and tapping intangible re-sources as shrunken arrows, leading to experiencesthat were not authentic, and severing the mecha-nisms of attracting tangible and regenerating intan-gible resources, all but halting the reproduction ofthe identity. We refer to this period as one of iden-tity threat, because it called into question members’beliefs about central and distinctive aspects of theiridentity (Elsbach & Kramer, 1996; Ravasi & Schultz,2006). Often identity threats are depicted as episodicand originating from outside the collective, but ourcase illustrates that the threat may build slowly andendogenously. Eventually, such a threat can triggermember and custodian-driven resurrection efforts.

Marshaling Illegitimate Tangible Resources andOrchestrating Inauthentic Experiences

As we noted, Coach Smith rebuilt a competitiveUO team that delivered significantly improved re-sults, but he did so by adding strength in sprintingand field events, while moving the team away fromits traditional emphasis on middle distance run-ning. Since team standings in meets are determinedby summing the points obtained by individualplacements in all track and field events, there wereseveral ways to be successful. An interviewee re-called how the UO team won the PAC-10 title in2004 by “scoring all of the points around distance[i.e., in nondistance events], but not much in dis-tance.” He and others observed that the new coach“was determined that he was going to have a suc-cessful team but he went at it his way, and his waywasn’t the traditional Oregon way.” Athletic talentwas central to producing orchestrated experiences,but Eugene residents and fans had come to expect acertain kind of talent. One interviewee reflected onthis time and said that the UO team has to havesome “superstars” and “a certain percentage ofthose have to be middle or long distance run-ners . . . this community wants distance runners.”

Having already recruited unaccustomed athletictalent, instead of tapping the value embedded inHayward Field, Smith proceeded to squander thisresource in orchestrating disappointing experi-ences for community members. One intervieweeobserved that the coach’s philosophy was to “savehis athletes for the big meets . . . so it ended up thatthey didn’t run in Eugene.” This attenuated therelational system that connected residents to ath-letes. “People in town didn’t have the same con-nection, they didn’t know who the athletes were,”observed one long-time resident, adding “take Ja-son Hartmann, for instance, who was an All Amer-ican several times in cross country and track. Hecould walk down the street and go totallyunrecognized!”

Failure to marshal tangible resources and orches-trate experiences that the community had come toexpect elicited lackluster emotional responses thatoften caused residents and fans to judge those ath-letic performances they did see as inauthentic. Aninterviewee said:

When you went to one of those meets . . . you mightsee a 5000 meter race run with nobody from UO init . . . and that just seemed like heresy after Bower-man and the era of Dellinger where you would see adozen yellow shirts [UO colors].

Another interviewee suggested that Smith wasthe “exact opposite” of Bowerman “so even though[Coach Smith] had good team performances there


was no community response.” The coach’s deci-sions about the team’s profile and his views aboutsaving their peak performances “didn’t sit well,”with identity custodians, who, according to an in-terviewee “said ‘No, that’s not the Oregon way to besuccessful.’”

Tapping Intangible Resources without EnrollingResidents

As noted previously, custodians continued tocreate ongoing experiences through events such asthe All-Comers Meets and other volunteer-drivenefforts. However, Smith’s action thwarted their ef-forts to tap and regenerate intangible resources.One interviewee said “I’ve been told . . . that[Smith] would say ‘don’t bring up the name Prefon-taine’ . . . he tried to create his own history insteadof building upon the wonderful history that wasalready here.” More seriously crippled were custo-dians’ efforts to enroll residents and new fans in theTrack Town ethos and to model behaviors at or-chestrated events. The lack of connection betweenathletes and residents and the lack of energy at thetrack meets were partly to blame, but the coach’sdecision to limit community access to HaywardField’s running track shredded the relational sys-tem and halted enrollment of new residents in theidentity. One interviewee commented that “puttinga padlock on Hayward” created a rift between thecommunity and the track team, recalling how Bow-erman had always insisted on keeping the fieldavailable for public use and noting “most of theyears that I’ve been in Eugene . . . 25 now, HaywardField has been open to the public.” Hayward Fieldsymbolized not only the athletes and performancesit had been home to, but also the personal connec-tions residents felt to the sport. One long-time res-ident observed, “Hayward Field . . . is the FenwayPark or Wrigley Field of Track. But one of thethings that makes Hayward Field magic is that wecan run there.” He continued:

Some of my best memories don’t have anything tothe do with the stadium being full or somebodysetting a record, it’s some of the runs I take at 6o’clock in the morning . . . I take my token lap atHayward Field . . . [and] go by and slap Bill Bower-man’s hand on his statue, just to thank him for allhe did.

The groundswell of reaction from custodians andcommunity members that occurred under Smithsuggests that a collective identity, even one thathad been running on memory and nostalgia, canbecome more sharply defined and fervently de-fended when the intangible resources upon whichit rests are threatened. One interviewee said:

We could have been satisfied with winning [underSmith]. He won some PAC-10 Championships, [but]it just wasn’t the right formula for this community.This community had a mandate, whether it knew itor not, for something bigger.

Identity custodians who had previously acqui-esced to the decline were galvanized to action. Oneformer UO runner recalled asking his contempo-raries from the “lost generation” whether theycould allow “track and field at the University ofOregon to continue to slip off into obscurity?” Theanswer, “a resounding no!” spurred them to action.In 2005, Smith was ousted as coach and VinLananna hired as his successor. Although insiderswere circumspect about exactly how this hap-pened, it clearly resulted from the withdrawal offinancial and other support by the UO’s leaders andboosters. One noted, “People in Eugene, people inhigh places, the alumni and financial supportersexpected more.”

In summary, the Smith era illustrates the break-down of leader actions that produce identity-reso-nant experiences. After failing to marshal tangibleresources essential to delivering experiences thatelectrified the community and sustained its iden-tity, the leader disparaged the intangible resourcesthat encapsulated past, cherished expressions ofthe identity. As a result, custodians and commu-nity members dismissed orchestrated experiencesas inauthentic, halting the regeneration of both tan-gible and intangible resources.

IDENTITY RESURRECTION: LANANNA ERA

The hiring of Coach Lananna in 2005 began re-kindling the Track Town identity. The final cycleof Figure 2 strongly resembles the more generalizedmodel in Figure 1, but the enactment of three mech-anisms were particularly important for resurrec-tion. First, the focal leader envisioned and orches-trated an experience that was bigger and bolderthan any of his predecessors had envisioned, pro-jecting a captivating tableau to the community’sdemoralized identity custodians and track fans.Second, this leader astutely created a series ofsmaller-scale orchestrated experiences that show-cased memorable athletic performances, broughtforward symbols from the past, and engaged thecommunity in ways reminiscent of Track Town’sheyday. Resurrection of an identity is facilitatedwhen leaders marshal tangible resources while si-multaneously tapping intangible ones that activatethe symbolic and relational essence of the atro-phied identity. In powerfully tapping intangibleresources, leaders can be seen as stepping beyond


their organizational roles to also act as identitycustodians. The third enabling mechanism for res-urrection was the fanning of the declining identi-ty’s embers by faithful custodians with deep rootsin the community.

Marshaling Tangible Resources andOrchestrating Experiences

Lananna proved to be adept at marshaling finan-cial, physical, and athletic resources to orchestrateawe-inspiring experiences. Hosting a major, signa-ture track and field event was central to the visionthat Lananna and other leaders held for kick-start-ing the resurrection. One interviewee explained, “Ifyou’re going to aspire to raising the bar and doingsomething fantastic, the Olympic Trials really setsthat stage,” adding “that’s the pinnacle, that’s thebiggest and best event that you can host.”

Myriad tangible and intangible resources wereleveraged to stage this event and others that fol-lowed. Interviewees reported that in addition torecruiting professional athletes to run for postcol-legiate teams such as the OTC Elite, the new coachrecognized the need to rebuild the core, the UOtrack and field program. Noting the importance ofmarshaling talent that met the community’s expec-tations, one observed, “The track program not onlyneeded to be champions, but to deliver a productand engage the community.” Another interviewee,remarking on the need to continue updating thephysical resource of Hayward Field “just to keep italive and improving,” also noted the importance offinding new “icons” of the sport who could helprebuild an anemic relational system:

If Oregon is strong in track and field and crosscountry and you have a post-collegiate team like theOTC Elite that develops icons that the average fancan relate to, you know, [fans will] say I love NickSymmonds, I have to go watch the kid run.

Between 2008 and 2010, Eugene hosted threemajor track meets (the U.S. professional and collegenational championships, and the Olympic Trials),showcasing inspiring performances and enablingcommunity residents to connect to athletes. Theperformance of the UO teams began improving rap-idly (bottom of Figure 3), and a number of athletesgained a devoted fan base. Renewed interest in theevents and performances was evident in an upsurgein attendance at Hayward Field (top of Figure 3).An interviewee noted that attendance had “grownexponentially since 2005.”

Leadership Actions Tap and Rebuild IntangibleResources

Unlike his predecessors, the new coach not onlyunderstood how to marshal tangible resources toproduce orchestrated experiences, but also wascognizant of the centrality of symbols and rela-tional systems to the identity. He noted, “I had beenhere before and seen such great events happen atHayward Field. There is a difference between beinga track fan at some other venue and being a fan atHayward Field.” Leveraging this unparalleledsense of place was critical to winning the bid tohost the ’08 Trials. One of Eugene’s emissaries tothe Olympic Trials Selection Committee recalledhow evocatively the delegation’s video had por-trayed the wooden grandstands, the roar of thecrowd, and historic performances at HaywardField. After its showing, he said, “There wasn’t adry eye on the committee, because most of thosepeople had competed at Hayward Field at onepoint in their life—and they knew exactly what wewere selling.”

In the run-up to the 2008 Trials and afterward,Lananna rebuilt connections to the communityday-to-day. Before the start of track season, hehosted open community forums, “Tuesdays inTrack Town,” at which collegiate and postcolle-giate athletes described their training progress andtook questions. To accommodate growing crowds,in 2011 these events had to be moved to a largervenue. Lifting a page out of Bowerman’s playbook,Lananna staged special events with star athletes,such as an attempt to set the American record in therarely run 4�1-mile relay. He opened the gates toHayward Field to all who wished to watch andinvited fans down from the grandstands to circlethe track, standing just meters from the athletes.

Authenticating Orchestrated Experiences

Much of this activity would have met with indif-ference had it not resonated with the Track Townthat residents and custodians had known andloved. Some harbored doubts that the “very orches-trated and planned” efforts of the ’08 Trials couldrecreate an identity that they knew had grown or-ganically. Identity custodians who volunteered towork on writing the Trials’ souvenir program tookgreat care in crafting sections relating Eugene’s his-tory, saluting athletes, rhapsodizing about heroicperformances, and celebrating Hayward Field it-self. One noted she felt offended by newcomerstrumpeting “Track Town U.S.A. forever” as a slo-gan, adding “it actually degrades it if you flaunt it.”Another said he felt offended by the label embla-


zoned upon the new “jumbotron” video scoreboard“because it reads, ‘Historic Hayward Field,’ and ifyou are that, you don’t have to say that!”

Experiencing the actual Trials, however, laidthese concerns to rest. Many interviewees re-marked that the Trials had a grassroots ambiance,despite their expanded scale and extravagance. Lo-cal ecological groups self-organized to ensure that“Eugene ’08” would become the first “green” Olym-pic Trials. Overwhelmed by residents seeking tovolunteer for the Trials, the software designed toenroll them crashed. One long-time resident spokeof how Eugene had “wrap[ped] its arms around theevent,” adding “I can be pretty cynical, but I wasjust blown away by how the town came together . . .everybody, even if they weren’t a big track fan,found some way to connect.” Another observedthat residents had been “just waiting for this re-birth, and the Olympic Trials galvanized it.” One,recalling the 1970s, said

There was electric energy in the air back then andyou’re starting to feel some of that again. . . . You can’tcompletely compare it, it’s a different time, it’s a dif-ferent era. . . . But can Eugene become Track Townagain? Absolutely—and I think it’s happening!

Indeed, many performances elicited exactly thesame emotional response from the crowds thattrack fans recalled from the 1960s and 70s. One wassparked at the 2008 Trials in the men’s 800-meterrace, run on a warm July 4th evening in front ofpacked grandstands with an overflow crowdwatching on giant flatscreens in the adjacent freeadmission festival area. In the final seconds, threerunners from Oregon surged ahead to claim first,second, and third place, a finish that seemed incon-ceivable for most of the race. One long-time trackfan reflected on this race: “There were a couple ofraces, one being the race with [UO runner] Andrew[Wheating], that gave me goose bumps becausethat’s the way it was every time Pre ran.” A news-paper account described the breathtaking finish as“the single loudest moment of any U.S. trackmeet. . . . A delirious crowd of 20,949 was on itsfeet, cheering so hard, and for so long, that the startof the next event . . . was delayed for 15 minutes.”Wheating, the runner-up, observed “If the Trialshad been somewhere else, it would probably belike, ‘Oh, here comes a guy on the outside. Nicejob.’ Kind of like a courtesy clap. . . . But here, it’smore emotional. It goes a lot deeper” (RegisterGuard, 2009).

The 2008 Trials marked the start of a cascade ofexperiences that restored the aura of Track Town. Astring of noteworthy meets were held in the yearsimmediately following, generating experiences that

enabled residents to connect, sometimes in newways, to a remembered and symbolized past. Ourbrief structured interviews confirmed that Hay-ward Field, Steve Prefontaine, Bill Bowerman, andprevious Olympic Trials remained among the mostsalient and celebrated identity referents at the timeof the ’08 Trials. One thing that enabled these pastidentity referents to remain relevant to contempo-rary residents and fans was the work of custodianswho had, even when the identity was most underthreat, crafted ongoing experiences that tappedthese symbols. For example, the weekly All-Com-ers Meets, started by Bowerman in 1949, were stillheld every summer, with volunteers coming outyear after year. One interviewee said, “Janet’s therehanding out those ribbons to the kids—and she’sbeen doing it for 30 years.” When the 2008 Trialsattracted a surge of attention, these custodiansseized the opportunity to reconnect venerable sym-bols to new grassroots efforts and connect newgenerations with the past. For example, All-ComersMeets were scheduled on the noncompetition“rest” days in the middle of the Trials, and eachchild competing received a T-shirt with a big redstop sign on the front imprinted with “STOP ME,”an ironic reference to the “STOP PRE” T-shirts thatSteve Prefontaine’s fans had sported during the1972 Olympic Trials. Later, when Lananna spreadword that two local athletes would run a free, pub-lic “tune-up” race at Hayward shortly before de-parting for the Beijing Olympics, children packedthe stands and then spilled out on the field to havethe athletes autograph their “STOP ME” T-shirtsand other memorabilia.

Regenerating Intangible Resources

Although these experiences were necessarily dif-ferent from those enjoyed by prior generations ofresidents and fans, they authentically brought for-ward the symbolic resources that had contributedto Track Town’s past identity, renewing and re-building the relational system upon which it drew.Importantly, the experiences did not simply refer-ence past symbols; they literally recreated symbolsin the form of memories and accounts laid downthrough experiencing and feeling. A local reporterwho had covered UO track and field since Bower-man coached captured this when he spoke of themuch-lauded 800-meter race at the 2008 Trials,noting that a lot of residents had been running on“borrowed memories”:

The truth is, a lot of them didn’t actually see Pre runin 1972, or see McChesney fall to his knees to kissthe track in 1982. But when we saw those three


Oregon men sweep [the 800 m] in 2008, well, that’sour memory now.

Authentication also rewove the intangible re-source embodied in the relational fabric connectingresidents, fan, and athletes. One interviewee notedthat the ’08 Trials “helped to create a new set offans in Eugene.” The OTC enjoyed an upsurge inmembership, with one interviewee noting that theorganization “had waxed and waned over the years[but it has] really come back strong now.” Echoingmany interviewees’ impressions that the timingwas “just right” for reengaging identity custodiansand ensuring they enrolled new ones, one organizerexplained, “I think that people [from] that era werewaiting to be asked. And once they were asked,they grasped it and passed it off to the next per-son . . . almost like a tree that flourished.”

The Trials not only reenergized and recruitedindividual custodians, but seemed to endow thewhole community with confidence in its ability tobe Track Town again. One interviewee observed,“There was a sense of pride. People said, ‘Wow,Eugene did something really great last summer andwe can do it again!’” The upsurge of communityengagement took all our informants by surprise,highlighting the resilience of a relational systemthat is energized by shared experiences, not simplydrawn together by charismatic leadership. One or-ganizer spoke of the emotional commitment thataccompanied this engagement, saying “I can relatelots of stories about people brought to tears . . .volunteers who were so emotionally involved . . .they were affected in ways that none of us evercounted on.”

In 2009, the executive director of U.S.A Trackand Field, the sport’s governing body, was quotedin the newspaper as having committed to a “con-tinuing partnership” with local organizers because“there’s a magic that occurs when [Eugene] has amajor event.” He continued by depicting Eugene’sidentity not as a set of labels or claims but asfeelings inseparable from place:

This is a cathedral for our sport. This is a temple forthe sport. There is probably nowhere else in thecountry where you can get the same feel, . . . and Isay this in a very positive way—there are ghostshere. There are ghosts that seep out of not only thevenue and the institution, but . . . [out of] what’soccurred here.

As depicted in Figures 1 and 2, this shared senseof experience and emotion is critical to authentica-tion, which, more than any other mechanism, actsto enable (or block) the regeneration of tangible andintangible resources required to perpetuate or res-urrect a community identity.

DISCUSSION

Beginning with the puzzle of how actors resur-rect a dormant collective identity, we uncovered aset of mechanisms for identity reproduction that,even when eroded, can be restarted by actions thatenergize identity custodians, elicit authentic expe-riences, and recreate cherished memories. In linewith recent organizational accounts (Gioia et al.,2010; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006), our findings suggestthat perpetuating a collective identity is an ongoingaccomplishment dependent upon the actions ofleaders and members. Our model differs from theseother accounts by explicitly describing mecha-nisms for resurrection following decline and byplacing experience and emotion at the center of aprocessual understanding of identity. Here we elab-orate on these contributions and discuss how ourfindings inform understanding of identity repro-duction and resurrection in other settings. To mapthe boundaries of our theory, we note organiza-tional settings to which it is best suited. Finally, weexplore implications of our analysis for under-standing interactions between communities andthe organizations lying within them.

Processes of Identity Reproduction andResurrection

Our model explains how a collective identitycan be reproduced through recursive interactionsbetween tangible resources (financial, human,and physical resources), intangible resources(symbols and relational systems), and experi-ences that are generated when leaders and mem-bers leverage these resources. Our model resem-bles the processual account that locatesorganizational identity in the interaction ofclaims and understandings derived, respectively,from the cognitive mechanisms of leader sense-giving and member sensemaking (Gioia et al.,2010; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). Identity claimsand understandings can generate an “embeddeddynamic” when leaders’ claims influence mem-ber understandings, and vice versa (Ravasi &Schultz, 2006). In our model, leaders marshaltangible resources (and astute ones also tap in-tangible resources) to orchestrate experiences. Asimilar embedded dynamic occurs when custodi-ans and members, who are primed by prior expe-riences, evaluate these experiences as authentic.

This embedded dynamic can break down in sev-eral ways. As we found, when leaders slow thedelivery of orchestrated experiences, identity de-cline can set in, even though members judge theseexperiences as authentic and resonant with the


past. A different outcome, identity threat, beginswhen leaders fail to deliver orchestrated experi-ences of the caliber that have come to be seen ashallmarks of the identity. More threatening still is aleader’s denigration of the intangible resources,particularly cherished symbols and relationships,which fuel ongoing identity-relevant experiences.In our case, it was a direct threat to the collectiveidentity, not simply a decline or drift, that triggeredrenewal efforts. Future research could explorewhether a threat is needed to catalyze to identityresurrection, or whether it might be triggered inother ways. In the case of Apple, the return of avisionary founding leader appeared sufficient to setresurrection in motion.

Restarting the identity reproduction process—identity resurrection— occurs when a leader cantap tangible resources to stage bold and appealingorchestrated experiences, updating while stillepitomizing ones that came before. Such experi-ences act as brash attention-getters; the ads Appleartfully designed to cause employees to comparethemselves to innovators like Edison and Gandhiare exemplary. Even so, such efforts may fall flatunless they are instigated by savvy leaders whocommand intangible identity resources andwhose efforts are embraced by custodians andothers who long to see their identity renewed.Molotch and his coauthors commented on effortsto regenerate community identities that rely onleader vision alone:

Getting wind of the possibility that local ambiancehas something to do with creating “miracles” likeSilicon Valley . . . various governmental and civicagencies have intensified their efforts to alter thetexture and trajectory of places. . . . Plopping in anew museum, science park, or stadium . . . all carrythe risk of artificiality. Without the needed comple-mentary elements in place, they may not be viableinterventions. (2000: 817–818)

Our model of identity resurrection points to atleast two elements that “complement” leader-driven orchestrated experiences. First, effectiveleaders complement their mobilization of tangibleresources by tapping intangible aspects of identity,activating its symbolic and relational elements. Inthis way, leaders also act as identity custodianswho are the guardians of these intangibles. Second,the traces of an identity must have been maintainedby custodians who have longevity in a collective.Beyond being the narrators of stories, or safeguard-ing records or mementos, these custodians musthave continued to live (and offer for other mem-bers) the ongoing experiences that contribute toidentity reproduction. Future research could ex-

plore how the identity resurrection process unfoldsin other settings. How do leaders’ prior experienceswithin or outside a collective shape their efforts tomarshal resources and direct these toward identityresurrection? What actions can custodians take tosustain an identity through periods of decline?Does, and how does, custodianship differ acrosssettings? Recent work on how members sustain acollective identity and even bring forth new organ-izations following the extreme case of organiza-tional death (Walsh & Bartunek, 2011; Walsh &Glynn, 2008), suggests that custodians may be cru-cial in organizational settings too.

Experience and Emotion in Identity Processes

Our perspective differs from that in prior workon identity processes because it foregrounds expe-rience over cognition as the engine driving the re-production and resurrection of a collective iden-tity. Lived experience, participation, and elicitedemotions may be more potent than talk and ideas,at least in some settings, in conveying and repro-ducing an identity. Although scholars have longnoted that identity has an emotional as well ascognitive component (Fiol & O’Connor, 2002; Har-quail, 1998; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), the emotionaland experiential aspects of identity are undertheo-rized and almost unstudied. Many studies of organ-izational identity limit their focus to members’“verbal descriptions of the organization’s charac-teristics” (Harquail & Wilcox King, 2010: 1621), butan expanded understanding would also embrace“what [members] can substantiate in their embod-ied experience” (ibid.: 1620). When scholars doattend to emotion and collective identity, they seeemotional reactions as triggered by identity under-standings, rather than seeing emotion as construct-ing identity understandings. For example, whenthreatened, group (Fiol, Pratt, & O’Connor, 2009;Gutierrez, Howard-Grenville, & Scully, 2010) andorganizational (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Elsbach &Kramer, 1996) identities are said to elicit emotionalreactions and arouse defensive mechanisms.

Our study suggests a more causal role for expe-rience and emotional responses in propelling a col-lective identity because experiences and emotionsdid not merely reflect members’ cognitive identityunderstandings, but, to a large degree, definedthem. We do not deny the role of cognitive pro-cesses such as sensegiving and sensemaking in per-petuating identity, but we believe that members’experiences and emotional involvement can shapetheir identity understandings. This perspectiveechoes a recent call for treating sensemaking aspotentially infused with emotion and for consider-


ing how emotional intensity cues sensemaking ep-isodes (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). The in-tensity and valence (positive or negative) ofemotional arousal can shape individual and groupaction, but interactions among emotion, sensemak-ing, and organizing processes are only beginning tobe explored (Walsh & Bartunek, 2011).

Attention to experience and emotion can contrib-ute to understanding identity persistence, decline,and resurrection because they help explain howpast identities are made meaningful to new gener-ations of members and how symbols and otherresources are literally regenerated to drive a presentidentity forward in time. First, experiences vividlyconnect participants to a symbolized and remem-bered past. Recent attention to the role of legacy,history, and tradition in organizational processes(Ravasi, Rindova, & Stigliani, 2012; Schultz &Hernes, 2010; Walsh & Glynn, 2008) highlights the“power of the past.” Our analysis suggests that thepast is made powerful when actors, rather thantreating symbols as passive carriers of meaning,actively engage in “manufacturing and reproducingtraditions and heritage [that] are passed downthrough successive generations, providing the rawmaterial for identity formation” (Weber & Dacin,2011: 294). We see identity custodians as guardiansof the past who reproduce the ongoing, everydayexperiences that enroll community members andhelp them to care about the identity. Unlike a “leg-acy identity” that survives the death of a firm butlives on in the “collective memories and activities”of former members (Walsh & Glynn, 2008: 262), acollective identity reproduced through experiencessurvives generational turnover as it is experi-enced anew.

Second, experiences and emotions generate newmemories and symbols to reload the “bank” of in-tangible resources available to be tapped. Sharingnew experiences rebuilds the relational system thatamalgamates individuals into a collective (Lampel& Meyer, 2008). Glynn’s account of changes in At-lanta’s identity stemming from its hosting of theOlympic Games shows that such an event can in-troduce symbols that reshape relationships amongelites (2008). Glynn noted that “events, particularlythose that are visible public rituals and ceremonies,can serve up a ready-made set of beliefs” (2008:1140). In contrast, the events and experiences inour case drove identity resurrection through theirresonance with the past. Instead of introducing anew vision, they restored a relational system inneed of repair. Our analysis suggests experienceswill fall flat if they offer “ready-made” beliefs thatcustodians cannot judge authentic. Thus, experi-ences do not simply manufacture or coalesce iden-

tity understandings in one-off fashion. Instead, achain of linked experiences drives identity forwardby evoking shared emotions, connecting partici-pants to past, present, and expected future instan-tiations of the collective identity.

Applying Our Model in Other Settings

Although we developed our process model bystudying the resurrection of a community identity,the mechanisms we uncovered have implicationsfor scholars whose interests center on organiza-tional identity processes. As noted above, introduc-ing experience and emotion to a processual under-standing of identity can complement cognitivemechanisms without replacing them. However, wedo expect lived experience to play a larger role inidentity processes in particular settings. These in-clude business organizations whose identities andbrands embrace culture and tradition. Scholarshave noted that in certain companies, lived expe-rience becomes so fundamental that it spills overfrom a company to foster a customer “brand com-munity” (Fournier & Lee, 2009). Harley-Davidson,the iconic American motorcycle manufacturer, per-haps illustrates this best. Following its near-deathin 1983, Harley-Davidson orchestrated shared ex-periences that brought its employees, managers,and customers into direct contact. Employees re-sponded to incentives to become Harley ownersand riders, led weekly rides, and hosted rallies fortheir customers (Fournier & Lee, 2009). AlthoughHarley’s public relations professionals supple-mented these ongoing experiences with carefullycrafted claims tapping into the mystique of the“hog,” what we term “ongoing grassroots experi-ences” clearly played a central role in the firm’sresurrection. An informant in our own study re-lated a story that further demonstrates the role ofexperience in reproducing an organizational iden-tity. Nike, the firm that grew from Bill Bowerman’sexperimentation with lightweight running shoes atHayward Field, continues to socialize managementtrainees by bussing them to Hayward Field from cor-porate headquarters—to sit silently in the East Grand-stand, and “soak in the ether of how Nike began.”

Even without a strong brand, organizations thattake a long view may invoke custodianship, expe-rience, emotion, and authenticity as mechanisms toperpetuate or renew their identities. Voluntary or-ganizations, which recruit and retain members onthe basis of shared values and visions, rather thanas part of a wage bargain, are especially well suitedto using orchestrated experience and elicited emo-tion to keep the organizations’ identities strong andup-to-date. Long-lived business organizations also


confront the need to periodically refurbish time-worn “assumptions and beliefs underpinning thecollective sense of self” (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006:451). Some organizations access their past primar-ily through stabilized forms, such as artifacts incompany museums, logos, or former mission state-ments (Ravasi et al., 2011; Schultz & Hernes, 2010;Walsh & Glynn, 2008), but recent calls for greaterattention to “living memory,” as opposed to simply“textual memory” or “material memory” in shapingorganizational identity (Schultz & Hernes, 2010)suggest that probing experiences and emotional re-sponses may prove fruitful in understanding howidentity is reproduced or resurrected in such settings.

Experience and emotion may be less relevant toidentity processes in other types of organizations.Companies commercializing rapidly evolvingtechnologies or pursuing emerging markets mayopt to sever ties to the past and link their identi-ties to contemporary developments. In somecompanies, leaders invoke “simplified recon-struction[s] of an alleged past” (Ravasi & Schultz,2006: 453) to create a sense of continuity in theface of change (Gioia et al., 2000), or selectivelyconnect aspects of a past identity to aspects of apresent-day identity seen as desirable to outsid-ers (Chreim, 2005). Such moves may be toleratedor even endorsed in high-velocity environmentswhere members value keeping up with trendsand matching outsiders’ evolving expectations.Such companies are more likely to pursue so-cially validated identity categories than to claiman idiosyncratic tradition or brand, suggestingboundary conditions for the application of ourmodel of identity reproduction and resurrection.

Interactions between Community Identity andOrganizational Identity and Action

Finally, our study points to ways of furtheringunderstanding of how organizational identities andactions are shaped by the identities of the geo-graphically emplaced communities in which theyreside. In the organizational literature, attention tocommunity has often focused on how the geograph-ical colocation of organizations creates knowledgespillovers that influence the prospects of individ-ual firms (Freeman & Audia, 2006; Romanelli &Khessina, 2005). Community identity in theseworks can refer simply to labels that companiesand others use to talk about a particular region (e.g.,Silicon Valley). Yet community can be conceptual-ized as more than a locale for situating organiza-tions, having been defined as a composite of:

The populations, organizations, and markets locatedin a geographic territory and sharing, as a result of

their common location, elements of local culture,norms, identity, and laws. (Marquis & Battilana,2009: 286)

With this emphasis, work on organizations andcommunities shifts from a focus on economic spill-over to addressing how social structure perpetuatesshared norms (Glynn, 2008; Marquis, 2003). Stillmissing is attention to how members experienceand develop meanings associated with community(Marquis & Battilana, 2009). Even sociological stud-ies of community have been critiqued for excessivefocus on social structure, power relations, and de-mographic factors, overlooking the possibility that“ideas, culture and identity matter at least as muchas social structure for the development of particularforms of social interaction” (Vaisey, 2007: 854).

Our study shows that community identity can bevividly experienced and felt, and that organiza-tional elites are but one contributor to its reproduc-tion. Organizations also play a role in perpetuatingthe experiences and harboring the symbols thatdrive a community identity forward. Thoughstudying the role of organizations in the currentsetting was beyond the scope of our study, weidentified them as including the University of Or-egon, the city and county governments, the OregonTrack Club, and Nike. These organizations’ identi-ties intertwine with those of the communities inwhich they reside or originate. The implication isthat, like Chinese boxes, identities are “nested.” Awork group, department, organization, and com-munity may share aspects of identity (Ashforth,Harrison, & Corley, 2008), and the degree to whichthese identities interleave shapes identity contentand fluidity (Gioia et al., 2010).

Can a community identity and an organizationalidentity cue each other and generate reciprocal ac-tions that reinforce and coproduce identity? Forwhich kinds of organizations might this be partic-ularly appropriate or useful? Cross-level coproduc-tion seems particularly likely to benefit organiza-tions located in places with a strong regionalidentity (e.g., Branson, Missouri [see Chiles et al.,2004]), or organizations such as hospitals or uni-versities that incorporate clients in the productionof a service (and hence serve colocated communitymembers). Future work could explore how coloca-tion generates and sustains experiences, meanings,and emotional responses that drive interactionsamong individuals, organizations, and their com-munities. An informant in our study who workedfor the county visitors bureau confessed that play-ing a part in Track Town’s resurrection had madeher feel better about herself—“I’m more confidentand optimistic now.” The possibility that individ-


ual, organizational, and community identitiesmight be cocreated opens up a fruitful direction forfurther research.

Implications for Process Research

Our work highlights new directions for processresearch and process thinking (Langley, 2007).First, it encourages organizational scholars to rec-ognize experience and emotion as potential triggersand drivers of process and to use methods thatenable them to observe and experience these fac-tors. Much process research has focused on action,and much relies heavily on ethnographic methodsgarnering data from observation and participation,yet most researchers analyze process data primarilyin cognitive or linguistic terms. Proponents of pro-cess research have challenged scholars to “plungedeeply” into process, rather than skim the surface(Langley, 1999), and we call for deep dives thattheorize and measure experiences and emotions.Our research was facilitated greatly by the oppor-tunity to interview lifelong members of the com-munity who could vividly recall “how it felt” eventhough decades had passed. We also benefited fromviewing video clips, photographic images, and me-dia accounts that captured some of the emotionaltenor of past events.

Finally, our findings show that understandingsome processes demands close attention to the ac-tions and experiences of members, not just manag-ers. Members, particularly custodians, were indis-pensible participants in maintaining Track Town’sidentity and in triggering and enabling its resurrec-tion. Although powerful individuals from political,social, and managerial elites also drive processes,researchers have been “reluctant to query manage-rial agency” (Johnson, Langley, Melin, & Whitting-ton, 2007: 12), perhaps giving managers unduecredit for outcomes. This may be especially true forprocesses of maintenance that transpire over verylong time periods. In such cases, process research-ers need to find and attend to the work of thecustodians, storytellers, and shamans who bind thepast, present, and future.

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Jennifer Howard-Grenville ([email protected]) is an asso-ciate professor of management at the University of Oregon’sLundquist College of Business. She received her Ph.D. atMIT. She uses qualitative methods to study processes ofchange in organizational and other settings, building theoryon routines, issue selling, culture, and identity.

Matthew L. Metzger ([email protected]) is an assistantprofessor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the Uni-versity of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He received hisPh.D. from the University of Oregon. His research inves-tigates the dynamics of organizational identity, with aparticular emphasis on identities in nascent and rapidlychanging organizational categories.

Alan D. Meyer ([email protected]) is the Charles H.Lundquist Professor Emeritus of Management at the Uni-versity of Oregon. He received his Ph.D. in organiza-tional behavior and industrial relations from the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley. He is a field researcherwho uses organizational theory and sociology as theo-retical frames to study corporate venturing, universityentrepreneurship, technology commercialization, in-stitutional change, and industry evolution.


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