Abstract

"The Gilded Cage: Agency and Structure in Strategic Uses of the Past"

Adam Frost, University of Southern Denmark (adamkfrost@gmail.com)

Organizations often use their pasts as flexible strategic tools, yet these narratives can paradoxically evolve into 'gilded cages' that constrain future adaptation. We challenge the prevailing view of history as an infinitely malleable resource, arguing that successful narratives generate a distinct form of structural rigidity. We conceptualize this process as narrative objectification: the transformation of a flexible strategic story into a binding objective reality. Drawing on a longitudinal study of Huaxi Village and Bourdieu's relational sociology, we identify three mechanisms—materialization, consecration, and ritual enactment—through which narrative becomes inscribed into the built environment, political commitments, and organizational practice. We advance a recursive theory of rhetorical history, demonstrating that narrative success in one era produces the structural constraints of the next, trapping the organization in a performance of a past it can no longer sustain.

KEYWORDS: Rhetorical History; Narrative Objectification; Organizational Habitus; Strategic Change; Path Dependence