 |
Hauk earned his PhD in ethics from Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion. Prior to that he earned a BA and MA in English from Lehigh University and an MDiv from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. He periodically teaches ethics and writing to undergraduates and serves on a number of editorial advisory boards.
Institutional memory
is a collective set of facts, concepts, experiences and know-how held by a group of people. As it transcends the individual, it requires the ongoing transmission of these memories between members of this group. Elements of institutional memory may be found in corporations, professional groups, government bodies, religious groups, academic collaborations, and by extension in entire cultures.
Institutional memory may be encouraged to preserve an ideology or way of work in such a group. Conversely, institutional memory may be ingrained to the point that it becomes hard to challenge if something is found to contradict that which was previously thought to have been correct. Institutional memory may have influence on organizational identity, choice of individuals, and actions of the individuals interacting with the institution.
Institutional memory can occur when institutions interact with both internal and external environments and systems. Both the type and level of institutional interaction lead to institutionalization and memory formation.
Institutional knowledge is gained by organizations translating historical data into useful knowledge and wisdom. Memory depends upon the preservation of data and also the analytical skills necessary for its effective use within the organization.
Religion is one of the significant institutional forces acting on the collective memory attributed to humanity. Alternatively, the evolution of ideas in Marxist theory, is that the mechanism whereby knowledge and wisdom are passed down through the generations is subject to economic determinism. In all instances, social systems, cultures, and organizations have an interest in controlling and using institutional memories.
Organizational structure determines the training requirements and expectations of behaviour associated with various roles. This is part of the implicit institutional knowledge. Progress to higher echelons requires assimilation of this, and when outsiders enter at a high level, effectiveness tends to deteriorate if this morale is unjustly ignored.
Organizational memory
(OM)
(sometimes called institutional or corporate memory)
Kenneth Megill says corporate memory is information of value for re-use. He views corporate memory from the perspective of information services such as libraries, records management and archival management.[1]
Organizational memory can only be applied if it can be accessed. To make use of it, organizations must have effective retrieval systems for their archives and good memory recall among the individuals that make up the organization. Its importance to an organization depends upon how well individuals can apply it, a discipline known as experiential learning or evidence-based practice. In the case of individuals’ memories, organizational memory’s veracity is invariably compromised by the inherent limitations of human memory. Individuals’ reluctance to admit to mistakes and difficulties compounds the problem. The actively encouraged flexible labor market has imposed an Alzheimer's-like corporate amnesia on organizations that creates an inability to benefit from hindsight.[2]
The three main facets of organizational memory are data, information, and knowledge. It is important to understand the differences between each of these.
Data is a fact depicted as a figure or a statistic, while data in context—such as in a historical time frame—is information.
By contrast, knowledge is interpretative and predictive. Its deductive character allows a person with knowledge to understand the implications of information, and act accordingly. The term has been defined variously by different experts: Alvin Goldman described it as justified true belief;[3] Bruce Aune saw it as information in context;[4] Verna Alee defined it as experience or information that can be communicated or shared;[5] and Karl Wiig said it was a body of understanding and insights for interpreting and managing the world around us.[6]
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.[7]
Explicit knowledge is the "what" of know-how: knowledge such as the professional or vocational skills that are recorded in manuals, textbooks, and training courses. 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,[8] and what Peter Drucker identifies in the use of the word techne, the Greek for "skill".[9] Much of it is implicit and ambiguous, acquired largely by functional, context-specific experience. 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 knowledge. This makes experiential learning, productivity gains, and competitiveness slow and expensive to acquire. 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment