Contesting histories : Unity and division in a building society

This paper reports a study of managers in a small English building society. Its intent is to stress the importance of members’ contested understandings of the history of their institution. Management in this organisation were both a unitary and a divided group – collective in some respects but divided in others. This is demonstrated with particular reference to managers’ different accounts of the organisation’s past and the ways in which these were deployed as relevant resources for avoiding extinction in the future.