How the Future Shaped the Past: The Case of the Cashless Society

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, Thomas Haigh and David L. Stearns
Additional contact information
Thomas Haigh: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; The Haigh Group
David L. Stearns: Seattle Pacific University

No 11009, Working Papers from Bangor Business School, Prifysgol Bangor University (Cymru / Wales)

Abstract: This paper invites readers to look into how beliefs about future events help to better understand organizational change. Our argument is that the adoption of information technology and the adoption of new organizational forms around it have been driven by shifts in collective ideas of legitimate organizational development. As an example we focus on the establishment during the 1960s of a vision within US retail financial services, namely of the “cashless/checkless society”. The article tells of the power of this “imaginaire” to bring consensus in driving actual technological developments.

Keywords: imaginaires; expectations; isomorphism; cashless society; payment systems; USA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/business/research/documents/BBSWP11009.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How the Future Shaped the Past: The Case of the Cashless Society (2014)
Working Paper: How the Future Shaped the Past: The Case of the Cashless Society (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bng:wpaper:11009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Bangor Business School, Prifysgol Bangor University (Cymru / Wales) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alan Thomas ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).