Writing out praise: Air Canada employees and the 1968 CEO change

• Published date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1415
• Date: 01 June 2018
• Author: Christopher M. Hartt

Writing out praise: Air Canada employees and the

1968 CEO change

Christopher M. Hartt*

Dalhousie University

Abstract

In 1968, the Air Canada CEO was an individual from out-

side the airline industry, when previously all CEOs had been

former airline pilots for the organization. In investigating

why, the union writings of Air Canada, a large Crown cor-

poration, make no reference to this 1968 CEO change. I ex-

amine how the values, beliefs, and ideas of employees affect

the development of an organization’s written histories. I ap-

ply actor network theory, sensemaking, critical

sensemaking, and theories of “writing out”to expose and

develop the concept of the noncorporeal actant as a critical

inf‌luence within a network and in the writing of histories.

Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons,

Ltd.

Keywords: Air Canada, history, actor-network theory,

noncorporeal actants, sensemaking

Résumé

En 1968, le PDG d’Air Canada était une personne étrangère

au monde de l’industrie aérienne, alors que jusqu’à cette

date, tous les PDG étaient d’anciens pilotes de la

compagnie. Dans les écrits du syndicat des employés d’Air

Canada, aucune mention n’est faite du passage de cette

personne à la tête de l’organisation. Dans cet article,

j’examine comment les valeurs, les croyances et les idées

des employés inf‌luencent le développement des histoires

écrites des organisations. En m’appuyant sur la théorie du

réseau-acteur, la construction du sens, la construction cri-

tique du sens et les théories de la « rédaction », j’expose et

développe le concept d’actant non-corporel qui exerce une

inf‌luence déterminante dans un réseau et dans la rédaction

des histoires. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John

Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mots-clés : Air Canada, histoire, théorie du réseau-acteur,

actants non-corporels, construction du sens

In 1968, the Government of Canada, led by Liberal

leader Pierre Trudeau, appointed Yves Pratte as the CEO of

Air Canada (AC). The choice of Pratte as CEO was consid-

ered highly unusual at the time because while all prior AC

CEOs had been pilots, Pratte was a lawyer. What’s more,

Pratte was not the heir apparent—Herb Seagrim had been

groomed internally for the job—and Pratte had not been a

manager in any corporation, while his predecessors had all

been managers at AC (except the f‌irst CEO who came from

an American airline). The reluctance of the Government to

accept the existing AC succession plan had been on the front

pages of newspapers from Vancouver to Halifax and was

widely discussed among the employees. The appointment

of Pratte coincided with the start of a decline in the fortunes

and reputation of Canada’s national airline. Given how

widely the appointment had been covered in the media, and

the controversies it highlighted at AC, one would expect it

to have prominence in stories and memoirs written of the

times, but histories written by and about the AC employees

ignored or “wrote out”the event. The lack of mention of the

Pratte appointment in employee histories is a glaring omis-

sion. Why was it ignored, or written out of the employees’

histories when histories focused on the company that were

published contemporaneously featured Pratte’s appointment

(negatively) and the political histories about the Liberal

government lauded it as a victory for French-Canadians?

To understand the signif‌icance of writing out key facts

from histories, management scholars ask: “What mecha-

nisms inf‌luenced the decision making of the historians?

How did the actors, networks, and the ideas, values, con-

cepts, and beliefs of the actor-networks inf‌luence the con-

struction of these histories? What sensemaking did the

authors engage in while writing and editing their books?”

This interrogation helps us understand on a broader scale

the impact that all participants in a network have on

important choices and decision making, which can help us

understand the factors that may be involved in daily decision

making around the world.

*Please address correspondence to: Christopher M. Hartt, Dalhousie

University, 258 Cox Institute, P.O. Box 550, Truro, Nova Scotia, B2N

5E3. Email: chris.hartt@dal.ca

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

35: 265–279 (2018)

Published online 22 November 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1415

Can J Adm Sci

35(2), 265–279 (2018)Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 265