Valuing a Multiplicity of Views

This chapter provides perspective and practical techniques that individuals and organizations can use to maximize knowledge transfer efforts. It illustrates the importance of using informal sources of information sharing to create a complete picture. The authors assert that using the traditional formal channels of transfer can leave holes when attempting to share the whole. Overall, the chapter offers practical, easily executable solutions that individuals can apply and that leaders can teach to fill the gaps that often go unnoticed. Influenced by sense making, storytelling, psychology, and visual mapping, the authors offer tools and provide coaching for using the tools, contained in text boxes throughout the chapter. The intent is to both introduce concepts and make them straightforward for the reader to implement.

A Manifesto for the Preservation of Organizational Memory Associated with the Emergence of Knowledge Management Educational Programs

This chapter introduces the research domain of knowledge management educational programs and issues associated with the preservation of knowledge about these programs. The chapter comprises a preliminary literature review of the academic and research perspectives along with the broader educational perspectives associated with knowledge management educational programs in the academy and in the workplace. The manifesto concludes with an imperative suggesting the critical need to immediately collect and preserve all significant knowledge artifacts comprising curriculum, courses, and instruction associated with past, current, and future knowledge management educational programs. Since knowledge management is continuing to grow as an emerging field, future educators will need access to the preserved organizational memory associated with instructional successes and failures in this new field.

Organizational Memory Challenges Faced by Non-Profit Organizations

Research on how organizational memories can be created, preserved and made available for future reuse in NPOs is presented. An initial review of the existing literature on organizational memory research is summarized. Particular emphasis is placed on the technologies used to support organizational memories and cultural considerations, particularly with respect to incentives. Three case studies are then be described to illustrate the particular challenges faced by the NPO sector: the Second Start school for students with behavioral problems, La Centrale, an artist-run centre, and Oxfam Quebec, an international aid organization. The chapter concludes with a proposed typology that can be used to characterize organizational memory models and systems that are best suited to different types of NPOs, which will vary with respect to main features such as organizational maturity, size and complexity.

Understanding Organizational Memory

It is generally recognized that Walsh and Ungson (1991) “provided the first integrative framework for thinking about organizational memory” (Olivera, 2000, p. 813). Within the field of knowledge management (KM), there has been interest in a variety of issues surrounding organizational memory (OM), which is understood to involve processes of storage and retrieval of organizational knowledge of the past for use in both the present and the future. The recognition of the importance of OM has implications for practice. For example, Argote, Beckman, and Epple (1990) suggest that the effective use of OM can protect an organization from some of the negative effects of staff loss, while Stein (1995, p. 19) asserts that an appreciation of OM can facilitate the solution of problems associated with the retention and utilization of knowledge within organizations.

Associative Patterning

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the basic concepts related to the unconscious life of an organization, and then addresses specific aspects of knowledge, learning, and memory, developing a language and framework for comprehending their application to organizations. Knowledge is addressed in terms of an information part and a proceeding part. Tacit knowledge is divided into embodied, intuitive, affective, and spiritual parts, with each of these aspects carried over to corresponding descriptions of memory. Organizational memory is then considered in light of a rapidly changing, uncertain environment. It is forwarded that organizational sustainability in an uncertain world requires a dynamic and responsive organizational memory. This highlights the challenge of keeping tacit memory updated as experienced personnel retire. Ideas and actions are briefly suggested to enhance and sustain organizational memory.

An Organizational Memory Tool for E-Learning

Learning can be considered an outcome associated with acquiring new competencies (Sicilia, 2005) and adding new knowledge. A competence is a way to put into practice some knowledge in a specific context. The process of competency acquisition starts from a need in this specific context. It may induce the search and the selection of relevant resources. Numerous resources may be used during e-learning, their access is a real problem. Different approaches may be adopted to exploit them. This chapter describes the tool E-MEMORAe, which supports an organizational goal-driven approach based on the concept of learning organizational memory. In such a memory, ontologies are used to define knowledge that indexes resources; the capitalization and the organization of knowledge, information, and resources relating to a specific context can be realized. End-users have a direct access to the memory. The organizational environment E-MEMORAe was evaluated in the context of two courses taught at the university (algorithms, mathematics).

Creating and Sustaining Meta Organizational Memory

The case study of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological-Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI), a Canadian government meta-organizational collaborative initiative, is presented. Multiple federal departments and agencies have a joint responsibility for creating a knowledge base and a national memory for the purposes of protecting the country against CBRNE threats posed by terrorists. The conditions of a meta-organization present particular opportunities and challenges for organizational learning and organizational memory. Organizational learning and knowledge management theory provide the premises for addressing these issues. An intentional knowledge management strategy has been instrumental in organizational learning, resulting in a knowledge base for a collective organizational memory. Ongoing challenges are being addressed by the strategy.

The Collective Process and Memory of Strategic Management

This study analyses how strategic management is integrated with budgeting in the cities using the Balanced Scorecard approach, which provides a general framework to communicate and implement strategies. The approach is useful in accomplishing the strategic objectives, measures, and targets decided by city councils. It is important to align the strategic plans of various units at the different organizational levels of the city and link them together in the budgeting process, which is the main management system in most public sector organizations. The study shows how the electronic collaborative technologies can support strategic planning, implementation, and preservation of organizational knowledge. The management information system provides a platform to integrate organizational knowledge and development to facilitate strategic management.

Revising the SECI Model for American Organizational Culture

This chapter discusses the revision of the SECI model originally based on Japanese organizational culture into a model based on American organizational culture. The argument presented is that the original SECI model was developed from a Japanese perspective that does not align well with the American perspective. The American perspective is much different than in other cultures because individualism is paramount, but when compared to the group-centric culture of Japan, the differences are made evident. The hope is that by converting the model to a culturally relevant one that it can be better used as a foundation for understanding organizational knowledge transfer thereby improving organizational memories.

Added Value of Ontologies for Modeling an Organizational Memory

With the aim to manage and retrieve the organizational knowledge, in the last years numerous proposals of models and tools for knowledge management and knowledge representation have arisen. However, most of them store knowledge in a non-structured or semi-structured way, hindering the semantic and automatic processing of this knowledge. In this chapter the authors specify a case-based organizational memory ontology, which aims at contributing to the design of an organizational memory based on cases so that it can be used to support better decision-making. One ontology goal is to serve as a base for the organizational knowledge exchange with semantic power, which can facilitate the reuse, interoperability, and automatic processing by agents. In addition, the ontology aims to be at a high level from which other more specific representations can be formulated. In order to illustrate its utility a practical case is shown.