Re: Using Corporate Memory LO3232

Peter Marks (marks@halcyon.com)
Tue, 17 Oct 1995 21:00:15 -0700

Replying to LO3185 --

John O'Neill <jao@itd0.dsto.gov.au> writes:

>Earlier this year there was a thread on the need for corporate memory to
>support organisational learning. If I remember correctly, the bottom line
>was that we agreed that corporate memory was a good thing to have.
>...
>3. corporate memory (as I understand it) has been developed on the basis
>of document storage. Has anyone investigated how individuals can access
>and reuse this corporate knowledge (especially in non-routine
>problem-solving situations)?

I like the direction of John's posting. In fact, going back to individual
memory as the precursor of the "corporate memory" metaphor, I wonder where
the good press comes from. The document storage model of memory seems
very close to the connotation contained in the term "memorization". In my
experience this was almost the antithesis of learning - it was what one
had to do to pass courses that were not understood.

>I don't think this approach will ever work for any problem that is not
>routine (i.e. that is not solved over and over again by the organisation
>e.g. the types of problems handled by transaction processing systems).
>
>I think there is a lot of intellectual value in "doing" the analysis
>process yourself, not just reading someone else's analysis (hence the ease
>with recoding software rather than maintaining someone else's).

This seems very close to the distinction I'm trying to make. Chemistry
was fun for me because of the aromas, but I knew I had no future there
because I had to painstakingly memorize all those reactions. In math, on
the other hand, memorization was not an issue for me - things seemed to
follow "naturally". But I had friends - now chemists - whose experience
was precisely the opposite.

I guess if I re-examine the metaphor in this light I'd have to say that
corporate memory qua database is a proposed crutch for organizations that
don't trust their members to learn "actively".

--

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