Organizational Memory - The Nature of Organizational Memory

The Nature of Organizational Memory

Organizational memory is composed of:

• Prior data and information
• All internally generated documentation related to the organization's activities
  • Intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trademarks, brands, registered design, trade secrets and processes whose ownership is granted to the company by law, licensing and partnering agreements)
  • Details of events, products and individuals (including relationships with people in outside organizations and professional bodies),
• Relevant published reference material
• Institution-created knowledge

Of these, institution-created knowledge is the most important.

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; Bruce Aune saw it as information in context; Verna Alee defined it as experience or information that can be communicated or shared; and Karl Wiig said it was a body of understanding and insights for interpreting and managing the world around us.

The word knowledge comes from the Saxon word cnaw-lec. The suffix lec has become, in modern English, -like. So, knowledge means "cnaw-like", with cnaw meaning "emerge". Its best interpretation, then, is that it is an emergent phenomenon, an extension of existing erudition.

Once knowledge is documented, it reverts to being information. New knowledge—what some academics call knowledge in action—is that which is either created incrementally, accidentally, or through innovation. Incremental knowledge is the product of prior experience that is already established and recognized—so-called "organic learning" that builds one experience on another (also known as existent or historical knowledge). It is the most common form of learning. By way of a simple illustration, existent knowledge is the established awareness that, because it is hot, it is necessary to avoid sunburn and dehydration. Existent knowledge becomes new knowledge when (for example) a European on a summer vacation in Mexico, being used to wearing a cap on sunny days at home, decides to wear a sombrero.

The second type of knowledge, accidental knowledge, happens unexpectedly—such as what happened in 1928 when a mold spore drifted onto a culture dish in the laboratory of Scottish research scientist Alexander Fleming while he was on a two-week holiday. It seeded a blue mold—penicillin—that killed off a harmful bacterium.

The third type of knowledge, innovative knowledge, is the labor of genius, such as the work of Leonardo da Vinci—who, in the late 15th century, conceptualized cutting-edge ideas like the aeroplane, the parachute, cranes, submarines, tanks, water pumps, canals, and drills. Innovative knowledge encompasses the type of learning that leapfrogs the other types, and—in da Vinci’s case—was so advanced that it had to wait hundreds of years for incremental learning to catch up.