Refereed Publications Abstract

TECHNOLOGY IS NOT ENOUGH: IMPROVING PERFORMANCE BY BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY

Knowledge management has recently emerged as a means of improving business performance. However, many early initiatives have focused almost exclusively on information technology and so missed the myriad ways in which knowledge gained from experience can become part of an organization’s memory and enhance performance. The pay off for knowledge management lies with getting newly created knowledge to a truly organizational level where others can put it to use. In this process, we have found that organizations must not only learn from key experiences but must also embed those lessons into a variety of organizational structures and processes before they will be able to consistently improve business performance. By moving beyond the simple use of information technology to capture lessons and reusable work products, these efforts ensure that important lessons are learned and put to use in the work activities of as broad a base of employees as quickly and efficiently as possible. The following article outlines an approach to improve business performance by attending to key learning processes during an experience and then embedding important knowledge into information stores, work processes, support systems and product/service architecture.

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