4. Organizational Memory
Everyday experience and some research make clear that the human components of
organizational memories are often less than satisfactory. Considering the many
factors that contribute to inaccurate learning and incomplete recall (Kahneman,
Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Nisbett and Ross 1980; Starbuck and Milliken 1988), this is
not surprising. The problem of poor organizational memory is, however, much more
complex than simple considerations of the deficiencies of humans as repositories of
organizational information and knowledge might suggest. Everyday observations
make clear (1) that personnel turnover creates great loss for the human components
of an organization's memory; (2) that nonanticipation of future needs for certain
information causes great amounts of information not to be stored (e.g., blackboards
get erased, task completion times are not recorded) or not to be stored such that it
can be easily retrieved (e.g., solutions to problems, even if stored, are often only
crudely indexed), and (3) that organizational members with information needs frequently
do not know of the existence or whereabouts of information possessed or
stored by other members. It follows that variables likely to influence the ongoing
effectiveness of organizational memory include (1) membership attrition, (2) information
distribution and organizational interpretation of information, (3) the norms and
methods for storing information, and (4) the methods for locating and retrieving
stored information. We need not discuss membership attrition, as its deleterious
effects on organizational memory are obvious, especially with respect to retention of
tacit knowledge. In addition, we need not examine information distribution and
interpretation, as the main idea-that the location of information and common
interpretation in multiple memory nodes is associated with "more" learning-was
discussed earlier.