Organizational Memory
For practical purposes, organizational memory (OM) can be broken down into three distinct time frames. Short-term OM lasts up to about five years; medium-term OM occupies a time frame of up to around ten years, with periods in excess of this constituting long-term OM. Typically existing only in the minds of individuals, it is normally very difficult to share and to capture. Because of its contemporary and contiguous nature, short- and medium-term OM is generally more relevant to operational issues facing the organization, whilst long-term OM is more conformant with strategy and culture.
The phenomenon of corporate amnesia was first identified by the British knowledge management specialist Arnold Kransdorff in his 1998 book of the same name. By then the flexible labor market had been in tow for more than two decades. Employees in many developed countries, who could previously be expected to have had one or two jobs in their working lifetimes, were now employer-hopping every four or five years in a workplace where redundancy was – and still is - commonplace.
Read more about this topic: Corporate Amnesia
Famous quotes containing the word memory:
“There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defence-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)