Abstract
Purpose: the paper suggests the need of a dialogue between the rising field of corporate heritage and professional business historians and archivists. Besides, the idea of a new multidisciplinary research project is introduced, aiming to the creation of an operative tool to assess and to enhance the attitude of the companies towards their own heritage and history. Design/methodology/approach: the conceptual part of the article is largely draws on the most recent literature on corporate heritage and account for some recent evolution in the business history field. The proactive part takes move from the presentation of actual cases of difficult relationship between heritage and history, taking into account some iconic ‘Made in Italy’ companies and a case taken from the author’s consultancy activity. Findings: a provisional idea of a quantitative index, encompassing elements of ‘heritage’ and ‘history’ evaluation, is presented. The interrelated categories of continuity/historical assets/heritage development are indicated as macro-dimensions among which the future research programme should define variables and test procedures to achieve the index definition. Evidences from the ‘Made in Italy’ cases demonstrate the need of a better understanding of internal structure of the ‘black box’ represented by the corporate past. Finally, the paper argues the non-contradiction between the claim for omni-temporality as constituent of corporate heritage, and a stronger focus on the dimension of contingency (very nature of the history), proposing an interdisciplinary path to achieve a deeper dialogue. Practical implications: the paper aims to promote the development of a research programme to turn into reality a procedure of evaluation and comparison of heritage-related elements. The goal is to contribute to the process of understanding of heritage as part of the competitive advantage of the firm, both enriching management precepts with historical-wise elements and stimulating business history scholars and archives management experts to contribute to the development of corporate heritage studies. Originality/value: the article add a new dimension to the debate about heritage, enhancing its multidisciplinary spectrum. Besides, the index proposed in the paper overcomes some limits of the Heritage Quotient model (Urde et al. 2007), aiming to the development of a tool intended to be useful for scholars and practitioners alike. Limits: the paper is an exploratory work on a new interdisciplinary topic. Hence, it presents a very preliminary stage of the programme, with the aim to gather resources and suggestion to actualise it in the future. Besides, the need to find a place in a void space between two disciplines so far not communicating, entails a risk of partially dissatisfy the methodological standard of both.