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

Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo and Haigh, Thomas and stearns, David L. (2011): How the Future Shaped the Past: The Case of the Cashless Society.

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.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: imaginaires, expectations, isomorphism, cashless society, payment systems, USA
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N8 - Micro-Business History > N82 - U.S. ; Canada: 1913-; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E4 - Money and Interest Rates > E42 - Monetary Systems ; Standards ; Regimes ; Government and the Monetary System ; Payment Systems; N - Economic History > N2 - Financial Markets and Institutions > N22 - U.S. ; Canada: 1913-

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