Dignity as Discursive Enactment of Tradition: A Narrative Approach on Tradition in Family Business

Our current understanding of tradition in organizations remain very limited. The lack of studies that take tradition as the main focus have made this concept overlooked as an important organizational feature. In this paper, I set out to address this issue by exploring how tradition is (re)produced and (re)interpreted in a century-old family-owned hotel. By adopting a narrative approach as an interpretive lens, I found that the reproduction and reinterpretation of tradition is discursively mediated through the notion of dignity. In particular, this paper argues for three forms of 'doing' dignity: first, dignity-by-category that is enacted through the discursive use of category making; second, dignity-by-sanctity that is enacted through sanctifying particular relations; and third, dignity-by-authority that is enacted through the exercise of authority to compel others to acknowledge one's dignity. To extend it further, the possibility of conceptual relations between tradition, dignity, and narrative identity is discussed. Drawing from the broader fields of social sciences, this study contributes to the scarce literature on tradition theory and dignity in organizations.