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Article Excerpt
To think is to forget differences, to create abstractions. I suspect
someone who cannot forget is incapable of thinking.
--Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
Over the last 20 years, the concept of organizational knowledge has generated tremendous interest among management researchers. Understanding how organizations learn and manage their knowledge has become a central focus of attention as research has shown the critical role of organizational knowledge and learning in organizational effectiveness. Yet, we believe that the current research is telling only a part of the story. In this paper, we argue that the focus on organizational learning has obscured the equally important process of organizational forgetting. Furthermore, we believe that the ongoing discussion of organizational learning needs to be complemented by a much clearer idea of how, and under what circumstances, organizations "forget," "unlearn," or "lose" knowledge.
The concept of "organizational forgetting" has arisen in at least three contexts. First, research has shown that simply being able to create (1) or transfer knowledge is not enough. Instances in which newly obtained or created knowledge disappears before it has been successfully transferred to the organization's long-term memory have been documented (e.g., Day 1994a), leading to the conclusion that avoiding forgetting newly acquired knowledge is an important part of effective learning. Second, several studies have shown that organizational memory decays over time and important pieces of knowledge may be forgotten if organizational memory is not maintained (e.g., Argote 1999, Benkard 2000, Darr et al. 1995). Third, several writers have argued that forgetting is sometimes an organizational necessity, such as when an existing dominant logic needs to be replaced by a new one (e.g., Bettis and Prahalad 1995, Lyles and Schwenk 1992, Prahalad and Bettis 1986). In this case, forgetting is understood as positive and a failure to forget leads to an inability to change (e.g., Miller 1990, 1993, 1994). These varied references raise an important question for management researchers: What types of organizational forgetting are there and how do they relate to learning? In this paper, we draw on a multiple-case study to explore the nature of organizational forgetting and to develop a typology of its modes. We build on our case studies, and on the limited discussions in the literature to date, to develop a broad perspective to ground and stimulate thinking and research on the topic.
In focusing on forgetting as a complement to organizational learning, we make three contributions to the literature. First, we begin to answer the call from a number of academic (e.g., Bettis and Prahalad 1995, Hedberg 1981, Nystrom and Starbuck 1984) and popular (e.g., Peters 1994) sources to include a consideration of forgetting in discussions of knowledge management. Second, we begin to empirically explore how and why organizations forget, and we discuss its role in the dynamics of knowledge in organizations. Third, we develop a typology useful to understand the different forms of forgetting in organizations, to explore their interrelationships, and to frame further research on organizational learning and forgetting.
We present our argument in three steps. First, we discuss the existing work on organizational knowledge, learning, and memory, and present the research questions that motivated our study. Second, we describe the international strategic alliances that we investigated and the method of data collection and analysis that we used. Third, we present our findings, focusing on a typology of types of forgetting and how forgetting fits into existing models of organizational learning.
Learning and Forgetting in Organizations
The concept of organizational knowledge has proven to be a powerful tool in understanding organizations (e.g., Conner 1991, Conner and Prahalad 1996, Easterby-Smith and Lyles 2003, Grant 1996, Kogut and Zander 1996, Miles et al. 1998, Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998, Nelson and Winter 1982, Spender and Grant 1996). From a knowledge-based perspective, firms are "repositories of knowledge" (Conner 1991, Conner and Prahalad 1996) residing in assets, rules (Levitt and March 1988; Schulz 1998, 2001), routines (Nelson and Winter 1982), standard operating procedures (Cyert and March 1963), mental models, and dominant logics (Bettis and Prahalad 1995, Prahalad and Bettis 1986). This store of organizational knowledge allows the coordination of individual activities within organizations to produce organizational outcomes (Douglas 1986). In sum, the existence of stored organizational knowledge is what makes collective action possible in an organization.
Beginning with this link between organizational knowledge and organizational capabilities, researchers have gone on to argue that producing new knowledge, or learning, is crucial to an organization's ability to do new things or to do existing things better. Without effective learning, organizations are unable to improve their performance and retain their competitive positions against organizations that do learn. Therefore, organizational learning is essential for sustained competitive advantage (Argote and Ingram 2000, Kogut and Zander 1992, Prahalad and Hamel 1990, Rumelt et al. 1994, Teece et al. 1997).
Defining Terms
Given this link between knowledge, learning, and competitive advantage, it is not surprising that the topic of organizational learning has received significant attention in the management literature (e.g., Crossan et al. 1999, Daft and Huber 1987, Dodgson 1993, Duncan and Weiss 1979, Fiol and Lyles 1985, Levitt and March 1988, Miner and Mezias 1996). It is also not surprising that the notion of learning has been defined in a wide variety of ways (Easterby-Smith et al. 2000, Easterby-Smith and Lyles 2003). While reviewing the entire literature on organizational learning is beyond the scope of this paper, two broad traditions can be distinguished (Miner and Anderson 1999): (1) a behavioral view that sees learning as a systematic change in assets, standard operating procedures, rules, and routines (e.g., Cyert and March 1963, March et al. 2000, Schulz 1998); and (2) a cognitive view that sees learning as systematic changes in the shared mental models and cognitions of organizational members (e.g., Daft and Weick 1984, Weick 1979). Differences aside, both schools of thought pay considerable attention to the modifications in the knowledge base of an organization induced by experience (Huber 1991), particularly in situations where the organization encounters unusual events for which it has no solution in its repertoire, thus initiating search processes and eventually leading to a new solution (e.g., Cyert and March 1963).
We therefore build on the similarities between these two streams of research and define learning as an addition to an organization's stock of knowledge growing out of experience; organizations learn as their knowledge base develops. These changes often,...
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