In a message dated 95-09-22 23:41:48 EDT, Rick Church replied to LO2870
by saying:
>
>To what does the psychobabble term "corporate memory loss" refer?
>
Having spent many (31+) years in a Fortune 100 company, I can attest to at
least the following forms of "corporate memory loss:"
--after mulitple reorganizations, no ability to do comparative multi-year
analyses; the base(s) was (were) too obscure to recover or recreate
--procedures that no longer worked, because the "intervenor" who made it
work was RIFed or retired
--systems which theoretically protected the "memory" no longer did,
because the "magic name" who made the connections between disparate data
bases was no longer in that job
--abandonment of "archaic" practices and processes because the "new" crowd
didn't understand the reasons for them, only to have a major blow-up some
six months later.
All in all, I do not view corporate memory loss as "psychobabble" at all.
Of course, this may not be at all what Colin Sharp and his colleague had
in mind when they wrote:
"My Colleague (Neil Lewis) & I have researched and written on the
problems of corporate memory loss with organisational re-structuring,
especially "de-layering" (a la Hammer & Champy- "Re-engineering"). Some
organisations are claiming that they are using groupware (like Lotus
NOTES) to ensure capture of corporate memory to avoid such losses. "
Regards,
Byrd
-- Byrd M. Ball Atlanta, GA BandABall@aol.com