Organisational anthropologist Hanna Ploeg-Bouwman studied the 40-year merger process (Samen-op-Weg) of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Netherlands that formed the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN).
Ploeg-Bouwman examined the process through a learning history, which focuses on the history of learning within a learning organisation. A merger is not just the sum of different identities; it is also about culture that is deeply rooted in traditions, emotions, power, symbols, language and music. In change processes, what went well, what didn’t, and why is not always recorded. However, these facts and personal and collective memories play an important role in the process. Ploeg-Bouwman calls these inhabited memories. And these come to the surface when the status quo is upended and adaptation is required.
The historically based remembrance cultures within the PKN involve issues of both faith and change; reason and emotion both play a role. A transparent national administrative approach to the merger process would have been quicker. The theological discussion didn’t provide sufficient guidance for a common goal. Ploeg-Bouwman wants to offer new action perspectives in the event of changes in idealistic organisations where deeply rooted beliefs make it difficult to work together. The research also makes a scientific contribution to the concept of inhabited memory in the study of change.