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Organizational Learning and Organizational Memory                     391



                   •     Managing organizational memory often means overcoming barriers to the process-
               ing of experiential knowledge accrued by knowledge workers over time.
                   •     Knowledge continuity is the process of ensuring that valuable knowledge is not
               lost to the organization due to employee attrition. Ideally, knowledge transfer should
               take place at the individual (knowledge worker), group (community of practice), and
               organizational (organizational memory) levels.


                 Discussion Points

                 1.   What are some of the key challenges in developing and managing an organizational
               memory system? Outline some of the key obstacles that may be encountered and how
               you would address each one.
                 2.   What does the term corporate amnesia refer to? How would you characterize the
               costs involved with corporate amnesia? Provide some examples to illustrate your
               points.
                 3.   What is the difference between OL, LO, OM, and organizational memory systems
               (OMS) or organizational memory information systems (OMIS)?
                 4.   How would you decide whether a particular knowledge element should go into
               a record management system, database management systems, a fi le or document
               management systems, the intranet or portal, the backup fi les, the archives, or the
               organizational memory system? What major criteria are used to identify a lesson
               learned or best practice that is  “ worthy ”  of being preserved in OM?
                 5.   How would you decide whether something is a lesson learned or a best practice?
               What additional work is involved in documenting a lesson learned so that it does not
               lead to blame or to an inadvertent disclosure of private or confi dential content?
                 6.   Name the major ways in which knowledge can be lost to an organization. Link
               these causes to the knowledge processing cycle (see chapter 2). What are some good
               methods to deal with such knowledge loss after the fact (in a reactive fashion)? How
               would you institute a more proactive approach to preventing knowledge loss?
                 7.   How would you assess the success of your OM systems, for example, a lessons
               learned, best practice, or story database? What sorts of tools would you use? Who
               would be involved? How would you act on the feedback you collected? What are some
               ways in which you could boost the adoption rate of the content?
                 8.   List the major steps you would have to undertake in order to develop a knowledge
               continuity strategy. Include information on how you would identify potential areas
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