Memory Systems In Organizations: An Empirical Investigation Of Mechanisms For Knowledge Collection, Storage And Access (original) (raw)
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Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2004
For proper knowledge management, organizations must consider how knowledge is kept and reused. The term organizational memory is due for an overhaul. Memory appears to be everywhere in organizations; yet, the term has been limited to only a few uses. Based on an ethnographic study of a telephone hotline group, this paper presents a micro-level, distributed cognition analysis of two hotline calls, the work activity surrounding the calls, and the memory used in the work activity. Drawing on the work of Star, Hutchins, and Strauss, the paper focuses on issues of applying past information for current use. Our work extends Strauss' and Hutchins' trajectories to get at the understanding of potential future use by participants and its role in current information storage. We also note the simultaneously shared provenance and governance of multiple memories – human and technical. This analysis and the theoretical framework we construct should be to be useful in further efforts in describing and analyzing organizational memory within the context of knowledge management efforts.
Information Systems and Organizational Memory: A Literature Review the Last 20 Years
Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management, 2015
The advancement of technologies and Information Systems (IS) associated with the search for success in the competitive market leads organizations to seek strategies that assist in acquisition, retention, storage, and dissemination of knowledge in the organization in order to be reused in time, preserving its Organizational Memory (OM). Organizational Memory Information Systems (OMIS) emerge as an enhancer of the OM, providing effective support and resources for the organization, assisting in decision making, in the solution of problems, as well as in quality and development of products and services. This article is an analysis of some OMIS selected from a literature review about its features and functionality in order to understand how these information systems are seen by the organizations. With this research, we realized that the relationship between OM and IS is still inexpressive, even with the existence of some cases of success in the use of OMIS in the literature. The literature reveals that an individuals' knowledge is not integrated in information systems management process in most organizations; much of this knowledge is generated in the organization retained in an individual himself/herself. It is easy to see that there is a need for strategies and mechanisms in the organization to stimulate and provide better knowledge sharing between individuals which, when associated to IS, allows greater control and effective use of Organizational Memory.
Shifting perspectives on organizational memory: from storage to active remembering
hicss, 1996
Thispaperprovides a critique of current conceptions of "organizational memory" as presented in a number of recent studies. It briefly reviews some of the rich and varied contributions from both administrative studies and information systems concerning this topic, while aC the same time noting the vagueness of the term as it is commonly used. What is of interest is the pervasiveness and perseverance of this nebulous concept across a wide range of disciplinary endeavors. The paper provides an important re-formulation of one aspect of "memory " thal is implicit if twt explicit in most current views, i.e. the notion of memory as a passive store, arguing instead for an active, constructive view of "remembering" that has a long, if forgotten history within psychology and other fields. In the final section, some implications of such an approach are discussed, paying particular attention to the need for empirical studies of "memories in use" and the need to focus on the active construction of common information spaces ,from information repositories, and expanding the domain qf discourse to include sociological as well as psychological perspectives on concepts such as memory, learning, remembering, talking, etc. in rhe context of organizations. This re-formulation of the issues surrounding organizational memory has significant implications for the kinds of computer "support" for this phenomenon which might be possible or feasible, which can only be touched on in this paper, but will be extended in.fiture work.
Systems Development of Organizational Memory: A Literature Survey
European Conference on Information Systems, 2000
Currently, there is no commonly accepted methodology for developing organizational memory systems (OM) that is comprehensive in the sense that it guides the development process from beginning to end and is in sufficient detail to be implemented successfully. Using the ideas of memory metaphor and the user's perspective, we review recent work on OM through two dimensions: the stages of
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Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW '98, 1998
The term organizational memory is due for an overhaul. Memory appears to be everywhere in organizations; yet, the term has been limited to a few uses. In this paper we examine what memory in an organization really is. Based on an ethnographic study of a telephone hotline group, this paper presents a micro-level analysis of a hotline call, the work activity surrounding the call, and the memory used in the work activity. We do this analysis from the viewpoint of distributed cognition theory, finding it fruitful for an understanding of an organization's memory.
A Literature Review on Organizational Memory from 1991 to 2021
Proceedings of the ... International Management Conference, 2023
Organizational memory has been found among the organization's characteristics outlined through organizational learning and knowledge management literature in the last three decades. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the nature, the place, and the role of the organizational memory from an examination of the literature starting with the year 1991, when Walsh and Ungson published, in a reference work for researchers, the first major contribution to the development of the concept. Our analysis has found 213 papers that from their title appeared to be dedicated to the study of the organizational memory, revealing three approaches towards the definition of the memory: based on the content, the structure, or hybrid (content and structure).
1999
adaptivity show some incompatibility that we would like to further investigate. We would like to better understand and master the emergence of current human practice that is acceptable according to appropriate cultural and philosophical criteria. This chapter provides a socio-technical framework for further investigations. Rapid societal evolution and memory needs emergence Computers are the latest tools that have emerged from a mathematized world. Today, computers are almost everywhere in our occidental society: at work, in administration, in amusement places, at home, etc. On the negative side, computers define an artificial world where reality is made of simulations. People may accommodate to the simulated world, loosing the sense of reality. On the positive side, computers enable people to produce, store and use various kinds of information. They were originally designed to process calculations, they have become mediating tools that can improve cooperation in the same way telephone does. In addition, they support information storage and access. An organizational memory system is an environment that mediates information exchanges among human and software agents at the same time or at different times, at the same location or at different locations. The World Wide Web is the largest environment of this type. Using the same technology, Intranets are transforming the office by enabling employees to cooperate on tasks, to retrieve information previously stored, and reconstruct the context of the production of this information in order to access the sense of it.
Building conceptual relations between organizational learning, knowledge, and memory
2012
Given the fragmentation in literature concerning organizational memory, coupled with the need for a greater understanding of how learning and knowledge are embedded in organizations and how they are retrieved, this paper aims to analyze some conceptual relations between organizational learning, knowledge and memory. A conceptual framework is developed and is represented by four propositions. Learning processes develop into new organizational knowledge, which is then stored in different repositories. Organizational knowledge, a product of organizational learning, is an integral part of the organizational memory. Therefore it is possible to use the same measures to analyze both institutional knowledge and organizational memory. The feedback and feedforward flow of learning are constituted and constitutive of organizational memory. We believe that a conceptual framework of this nature may be of great help both in building a unified theoretical framework on organizational memory and in conceiving organizational memory systems in real organizations.
The impact of organizational memory information systems on organizational learning
AMCIS 1997 Proceedings, 1997
This paper reports on a case study of the organizational memory information system (OMIS) of an engineering group at a nuclear power plant. It found that the OMIS was effective based on the criteria of the competing values model (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983). The engineering group was also considered to be effective based on the criteria used to evaluate effectiveness by the group managers. One of the criteria used to assess group effectiveness was the ability to use organizational memory and it was found that an improved OMIS resulted in improved organizational and individual effectiveness. The study also found that measurements of OMIS effectiveness could of been improved by refining the competing values model measurement of "integration" and by creating a measure for evaluating the reliance on individual's memories.