The Long Tail of Political Coalitions in Organizations: Emotions and the Construction of History

Political coalitions are foundational to organization theory, traditionally understood as context-specific and tied to time-sensitive struggles for power and resources. We extend March's (1962) conception to argue that organizational coalitions can have an afterlife sustained by individual memories and emotional dynamics related to the organizational past. Drawing on historical narratives from executives and managers involved in a Nordic media merger in the late 1990s, we show how initial coalition alignments continuously shaped individuals' interpretations—even decades later, after extensive organizational changes and the departure of all original members. Our focus on individual remembering reveals how the merger became increasingly negatively reframed over time, particularly among opposing coalition members. This shift was amplified by our research process, which became an arena of conflict among interviewees. We demonstrate how coalition memberships persist over decades, resulting in contested history construction that becomes gradually detached from the focal organization and interest-based rationality. Our findings challenge assumptions that coalitions require organizational continuity, showing instead they endure through personal emotions and reinterpretation of past decisions, independent of formal organizational existence.