Organizational memory

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Organizational memory (OM)

Organizational memory (sometimes called institutional or corporate memory) is the body of data, information and knowledge relevant to an individual organization’s existence. Falling under the wider disciplinary umbrella of knowledge management (KM), it has two repositories – an organization's archives, including its electronic data bases, and individuals’ memories.

Its application is only possible if it can be accessed, necessitating effective retrieval systems in the case of the former and good memory recall in the case for the latter, while its importance to an organization is dependent on how well individuals can apply it, a discipline known as experiential learning or evidence based practice. In the case of individuals’ memories, OM’s veracity is invariably compromised by inherent short and selective memory recall, individuals’ reluctance to admit to mistakes and difficulties and the single biggest change in workplace practice for more than a century, the actively-encouraged flexible labor market, which has imposed on organizations an Alzheimer-like corporate amnesia that enforces an inability to benefit from hindsight (Corporate Amnesia, Butterworth Heinemann, 1998).

OM’s makeup

OM’s composition includes prior data and information, all internally-generated documentation to do with the organizations activities such as intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trademarks, brands, registered design, trade secrets and processes whose ownership is granted to the company by law, licensing and partnering agreements), details of events, products and individuals (including relationships with people in outside organizations and professional bodies), relevant published reference material and – importantly – institution-created knowledge.

For an appreciation of the three main planks of OM, it is necessary to understand the differences between data, information and knowledge.

Data is a fact depicted as a figure or a statistic while data in context - such as in a historical time frame - is information. In contrast knowledge is interpretative and predictive. Its deductive character allows its owner to understand the implications of information and act accordingly. Of an exceptionally esoteric nature, it is variously described by Alvin Goldman as justified true belief (“Knowledge in a Social World”, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1999), by Bruce Aune as information in context (“Knowledge, Mind, and Nature: An Introduction to Theory of Knowledge and the Philosophy of Mind”, Random House, 1967), by Verna Alee as experience or information that can be communicated or shared (“The Future of Knowledge: Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks”, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002) and by Karl Wiig as a body of understanding and insights for interpreting and managing the world around us (“A Knowledge Model for Situation-Handling”. Knowledge Research Institute, Inc., 2003).

The word knowledge comes from the Saxon word ‘cnaw-lec’. The suffix ‘lec’ has become in modern English ‘-like’. So knowledge means ‘cnaw-like’, with ‘cnaw’ meaning emerge. Its best interpretation, then, is that it is an emergent phenomenon, an extension of existing erudition.

In reality, once knowledge is documented it reverts to information. New knowledge - what some academics call ‘knowledge in action’ - is that which is either created incrementally, accidentally or through innovation. The first is the product of prior experience that is already established and recognized – so-called organic learning that builds one experience on another (also known as existent or historical knowledge). It is the most common form of learning and the way most erudition takes place. By way of a simple illustration, existent knowledge is the established awareness that, because it is hot, it is necessary to avoid sunburn and dehydration. Where existent knowledge becomes new knowledge is when, for example, a European holidaymaker, more used to wearing a cap in home sunshine, decides to wear a sombrero in a Mexican summer.

The second type of knowledge, accidental knowledge, happens unexpectedly, such as what happened in 1928 when a spore drifted onto the culture dish in the laboratory of Scottish research scientist Alexander Fleming while he was on a two-week holiday. It - penicillin, one of the medical world’s most beneficial discoveries - seeded a blue mold that killed off a harmful bacterium.

The third - innovative knowledge - is the labor of genius, such as the work of Leonardo da Vinci who, in the late 15th Century, conceptualized cutting-edge ideas like the aeroplane, the parachute, cranes, submarines, tanks, water pumps, canals and drills. It encompasses the type of learning that leapfrogs the other types of learning and, in da Vinci’s case, was so advanced that it had to wait hundreds of years for incremental learning to catch up.

The difference between explicit and tacit knowledge

In its modern understanding, knowledge is made up of explicit knowledge, sometimes called skilled knowledge, and tacit or cognitive knowledge, sometimes known as ‘coping skills’, a category first identified by Michael Polanyi in 1958 ( “The Tacit Dimension”. Anchor Books, 1967). The former is the type of knowledge such as the professional or vocational skills that are recorded in the abundant manuals, text books and training courses – the ‘what’ of know-how. Tacit knowledge on the other hand is the non-technical 'how' of getting things done, what Edward de Bono, the inventor of lateral thinking, calls 'operacy’ or the skill of action (Six Action Shoes”, Longman Higher Education, 1991), and what Peter Drucker identifies in the use of the word [[techne]], the Greek for 'skill' (“Post-Capitalist Society”. Butterworth Heinemann, 1993). Much of it is implicit and ambiguous and acquired largely by experience that is functional and context-specific. Typically existing only in the minds of individuals, tacit knowledge is normally very difficult to capture, with most organizations depending almost entirely on the explicit, making experiential learning, productivity gains and competitiveness slow and expensive. In business terms, tacit knowledge is a passive misnomer for active sharing of knowledge to make an organization more effective.

The reality is that even though most organizational work processes are largely designed around documentation, much remains unrecorded, especially that to do with decision-making. The record often reflects the desire to gloss over disagreements and serious questions, or the desire to sell or excuse.

Given the high levels of corporate amnesia in commerce and industry, some organizations are turning to new techniques to preserving their OM and, in particular, their tacit knowledge. The latest capture tools to get attention are the traditional corporate history, usually produced once or twice every 100 years as a public relations medium, and oral debriefing, an augmentation of the old-fashioned prescriptive and formulaic exit interview. Instead of hagiography, OM is being produced as an induction/educational tool that transmits long-term OM while the latter, which concentrates on short- and medium-term memory, targets exiting and key occupant employees, recurring corporate events and important projects in detailed testimony of participants. Both are designed to extract tacit knowledge in an easily accessible format that also generates the ‘lessons of history’. Its permanent character also means that it does not have to be continually reproduced, just updated, and that its necessary re-interpretation alongside changing circumstances is predicated on a more reliable evidential base.

How experiential learning works

When it comes to experiential learning, an awareness of both the explicit and tacit components of OM on their own is not generally enough to create new knowledge efficiently. As a general rule it needs to be accompanied by a focussed learning phase.

Most models of experiential learning are cyclical and have three basic phases:

+ Awareness of an experience or problem situation + A reflective phase within which the learner examines the OM around the experience and draws erudition from that reflection + And a testing phase within which the new insights or learnings, having been integrated with the learner's own conceptual framework, are applied to a new problem situation or experience.

The concept’s starting point (Arnold Kransdorff, Corporate DNA: Using Organizational Memory to improve poor decision-making’, Gower Publishing 2006) is that individuals or organizations seldom learn from experience unless the experience is assessed and then assigned its own meaning in terms of individual and/or the organization’s own goals, aims, ambitions and expectations. From these processes come the insights and added meaning, which is then applied to new circumstances. The end product is better decision-making.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Arnold Kransdorff, Corporate Amnesia, Butterworth Heineman, 1998. Also [1] Arnold Kransdorff, Corporate DNA, Gower Publishing, 2006.

James P. Walsh and Gerardo Rivera Ungson, 1991. The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 57-91

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