THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON

ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY

GORDON B. SCHMIDT & TAYLOR SCHENKIPFW

SOUTHERN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATIONOCTOBER 27TH 2016

OUTLINE-Organizational Memory/ Why is it important-Technological impact on organizational memory

-Metaknowledge- Impact of social media -Power of Forgetting-Future Directions

THE PAST OF ORGANIZATIONS IS IMPORTANT

•Effects what organizations do•What is considered possible•What blindspots•What the organization stands for•How things are done

ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY• Knowledge stored by organization that can impact how the

organizations makes decisions (Walsh & Ungson, 1991)• 3 major considerations•Where memory is stored

• Processes of obtain, store, retrieve

•Meaning for organization

TECHNOLOGY CAN SHAPE ALL 3 OF THESE PROCESSES

• Computer programs• Data bases (The Cloud)• External archives like the Internet• Social Media

•We examine how technology impacts Organizational Memory

METAKNOWLEDGE•Who has relevant knowledge or skills• Ex. Need specific programming knowledge skills for a project

•Often “knowledge fog”•We know someone with knowledge but don’t known that they

knowComponent of Transactive Memory Systems• Distributed knowledge• Knowing where knowledge is found is as important

as actual knowledge • Ex. Google, team members, departments

• Lessens cognitive load of individuals

SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT

• Building communication visibility (Leonardi 2014)• Less withholding of information• Passive viewing of knowledge

• Social media makes information easier to access• Directly and Indirectly

• Everything in one place• Enterprise social media

MEMORY STORAGE•Where organizational memory information is kept•Technology can be a place to store information•Wikis• Store important organizational information that can be

revised•External Storage• Internet can have relevant information- Google it!• Sparrow et al. (2011)•With ease of access search engine we store information on

how to search for it, rather than info itself

ORGANIZATIONAL FORGETTING• Purging information that is no longer relevant

or is detrimental to the organization

•New tech for good = maintaining information and ridding itself of information that is wrong

• Ex. Wikipedia

• New tech for bad=making inaccurate/embarrassing information easier to find

• Ex. Search engines, Google

FUTURE DIRECTIONS•Continual refining of social media tools

• Techniques to limit irrelevant knowledge resurfacing

•Collaboration with communication research for progression of organizational memory construct

•Refining the design of the memory storage systems