Abstract
Rhetorical history research has shown how organizations construct and mobilise narratives of the past to support strategic objectives, often treating these narratives as relatively coherent, internally consistent and strategically aligned. However, existing work continues to privilege the narrators and under-theorises how such narratives are produced through interaction between organizational actors. This paper addresses this limitation by examining the co-construction of rhetorical history in practice. Drawing on 21 interviews conducted at a multinational bank during a period of organizational crisis, we analyse how corporate archivists and senior executives interact and collaborate in the production of strategic historical narratives. We show that rhetorical history is not simply constructed or deployed, but gives rise to multiple rhetorical histories, emerging through ongoing processes of curating, interpreting, and mobilising the past, as well as through episodes of contestation and revision. These processes are relational, recursive and interdependent, producing narratives that are negotiated and stabilised across actors with distinct forms of authority over the past. We contribute to rhetorical history scholarship by shifting attention from the strategic use of history to its co-construction, highlighting the dynamic and contested processes through which historical narratives are produced within organizations. We develop a process model that foregrounds the transitions between stages of narrative construction, demonstrating how power, expertise, and organizational position shape the production of rhetorical histories in practice.