This document discusses the impact of information technology on organizational memory. It outlines how technology can shape the processes of obtaining, storing, and retrieving organizational knowledge. It also examines how social media and "metaknowledge" (knowing who has what expertise) are impacted by technology. The document concludes by discussing organizational forgetting and directions for future research at the intersection of technology and organizational memory.

1. THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY ON ORGANIZATIONAL
MEMORY
GORDON B. SCHMIDT & TAYLOR SCHENK
IPFW
SOUTHERN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION
OCTOBER 27TH 2016

2. OUTLINE
-Organizational Memory/ Why is it important
-Technological impact on organizational memory
-Metaknowledge
-Impact of social media
-Power of Forgetting
-Future Directions

3. THE PAST OF ORGANIZATIONS IS IMPORTANT
•Effects what organizations do
• What is considered possible
• What blindspots
• What the organization stands for
• How things are done

4. ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY
• Knowledge stored by organization that can impact how the organizations
makes decisions (Walsh & Ungson, 1991)
• 3 major considerations
• Where memory is stored
• Processes of obtain, store, retrieve
• Meaning for organization

5. TECHNOLOGY CAN SHAPE ALL 3 OF THESE
PROCESSES
• Computer programs
• Data bases (The Cloud)
• External archives like the Internet
• Social Media
• We examine how technology impacts Organizational Memory

6. METAKNOWLEDGE
• Who has relevant knowledge or skills
• Ex. Need specific programming knowledge skills for a project
• Often “knowledge fog”
• We know someone with knowledge but don’t known that they know
Component of Transactive Memory Systems
• Distributed knowledge
• Knowing where knowledge is found is as important
as actual knowledge
• Ex. Google, team members, departments
• Lessens cognitive load of individuals

7. SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT
• Building communication visibility (Leonardi 2014)
• Less withholding of information
• Passive viewing of knowledge
• Social media makes information easier to access
• Directly and Indirectly
• Everything in one place
• Enterprise social media

8. MEMORY STORAGE
•Where organizational memory information is kept
•Technology can be a place to store information
•Wikis
• Store important organizational information that can be revised
•External Storage
• Internet can have relevant information- Google it!
• Sparrow et al. (2011)
• With ease of access with search engines we store information on how
to search for it, rather than info itself

9. ORGANIZATIONAL FORGETTING
• Purging information that is no longer relevant or is
detrimental to the organization
• New tech for good = maintaining information and
ridding itself of information that is wrong
• Ex. Wikipedia
• New tech for bad=making inaccurate/embarrassing
information easier to find
• Ex. Search engines, Google, Reddit, YouTube

10. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• Continual refining of social media tools
• Techniques to limit irrelevant knowledge resurfacing
• Collaboration with communication research for progression of
organizational memory construct
• Refining the design of the memory storage systems