Organizational Forgetting and its Causes: an Empirical Research

Purpose – To determine the impact of organizational forgetting on knowledge-intensive firms and the circumstances in which the loss of distinctive knowledge takes place. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical research consisted of a qualitative proposal based on two case studies in Higher Education involving situations of organizational forgetting. Findings – A framework for conceptualising organizational forgetting. Moreover, the results of the case study analysis include a categorization of organizational forgetting and a set of propositions about their causes. Originality/value – Scientific research on knowledge management has focused on the processes of knowledge creation, use and transfer, but has devoted little attention to the processes of knowledge degradation and destruction. Article Type: Research paper Keyword(s): Organizational unlearning; Organizational forgetting; Knowledge destruction; Knowledge change; Knowledge stocks and flows Introduction The knowledge-based view holds that a firm can be conceptualized as an institution for integrating knowledge (Grant, 1996). Based on works by Dierickx and Cool (1989), DeCarolis and Deeds (1999) and others, organizational knowledge can be represented as stocks of knowledge that grow through flows of increasing knowledge (organizational learning) and shrink through flows of depreciating knowledge (organizational forgetting). Scientific research on knowledge management has focused on the processes of knowledge creation, use and transfer, but has devoted little attention to the processes of knowledge degradation and destruction. Since the 1970s and 1980s, the subject of organizational forgetting has been studied by a small number of researchers working in the areas of operations and organization theory. This divergence has engendered two disparate and by no means heterogeneous academic streams on the phenomenon of organizational forgetting. A study of the literature on the subject leads to two questions: what causes the processes of organizational forgetting? and under what circumstances does it occur? Firstly, our paper compiles and unifies the literature produced by the two academic streams to provide a new starting point for research into the phenomenon of organizational forgetting. Secondly, the paper sets out an empirical study based on the analysis of two cases in the field of university education. As a result of this study, we propose a categorization of four types of organizational forgetting based on the codifiability of knowledge (Zander and Kogut, 1995) and the intentionality of the forgetting process (Martin and Phillips, 2003). Finally, the results of our research provide a set of propositions that may explain the possible causes of organizational forgetting. Theoretical framework Knowledge stocks and flows Organizational knowledge may be conceptualized as stocks of knowledge and flows of knowledge or information (Dierickx and Cool, 1989; DeCarolis and Deeds, 1999). This concept is based partly on prior research into information processing and organizational design (e.g. Galbraith, 1973). Since then, both elements (stocks and flows of knowledge) have been central issues in numerous research areas, such as the resource-based view (Barney 2001), the examination of capabilities (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000; Zander and Kogut, 1995), the information view of new product development (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992) and organizational learning (Bontis, Crossan and Hulland, 2002; Huber, 1991). Stocks of knowledge are described as the accumulation of knowledge assets within a firm, while flows of knowledge represent the streams of knowledge that move between different parts of a firm, or between external agents and the firm, and that can be assimilated and transformed into stocks of knowledge (DeCarolis and Deeds, 1999). There are alternative definitions of the concept of knowledge flow, such as those put forward by Darr, Argote and Epple (1995), Szulanski (1996) and Schulz (2001), although they all link the flow of knowledge to the movement and use of the stock of knowledge. Flows of knowledge have been classified as (1) horizontal or vertical (Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000; Schulz, 2001); (2) internal or external (Kyriakopoulos and Ruyter, 2004); and (3) input or output (Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000). Dierickx and Cool (1989) introduced a different classification of knowledge flows using the bathtub metaphor. According to this example, the stock of water is indicated by the level of water in the tub and its level will depend on the flows of water into the tub (through the tap) and the flows of water out of the tub (through a leak). Using this metaphor, Dierickx and Cool (1989) posit that a firm’s stock of knowledge can be increased by flows of additional knowledge or diminished by depreciating knowledge flows, that is, flows of organizational forgetting. Organizational forgetting Organizational forgetting has been defined as the intentional or unintentional loss of organizational knowledge at any level (Martin and Phillips, 2003). The earliest contributions by Wickelgren (1976) and Anderson (1985) were developed in the area of operations and based on the study of the degradation of knowledge due to interruptions in the production process. In the field of organization theory, researchers developed the concept of unlearning as an intentional process of discarding obsolete and misleading knowledge (Hedberg, 1981:3). Other authors considered unlearning as a required process to erase dominating ideas in order to become receptive to new ones. “Before organizations will try new ideas, they must unlearn old ones by discovering their inadequacies and then discarding them” (Nystrom and Starbuck, 1984: 53). Following these initial contributions, organizational forgetting has been studied mainly from two standpoints. The first standpoint sees accidental or unwanted forgetting as a degradation of the stocks of organizational knowledge. The second standpoint considers forgetting as an intentional process of unlearning preceding organizational learning. In the first academic stream, the research carried out by Smunt and Morton (1985) and Smunt (1987) reasserted that the “forgetting” or the depreciation of knowledge has far-reaching implications on production programming and planning. The quantitative study by Argote, Beckman and Epple (1990) on the modelling of learning curves broke with the assumption that experience accumulated indefinitely (assessed as accumulated units produced), and confirmed empirically that knowledge acquired in production depreciates quickly. Later research has quantified the value of the depreciation of knowledge in production, with widely varying results. Darr, Argote and Epple (1995) concluded that just 47.4% of the stock of knowledge at the beginning of the month was maintained at the end of the month in pizza franchises. Epple, Argote and Murphy (1996) gave similar results in the automotive industry. Benkard (2000) found that 61% of the stock of experience of a firm that manufactured airplanes was retained in the course of one year. Other experiential studies in the automotive industry analysed longitudinally the learning results of improvement programmes (Carmona and Grönlund, 1998). They found that teams initial learning was supported by intrinsic motivation but when it disappeared, organizational learning became organizational forgetting. The overall conclusion was that forgetting has a negative impact on production capacity, productivity or product quality and that it should therefore be prevented. By contrast, the second academic stream examines intentional forgetting as a preliminary step to organizational learning: “learning often cannot occur until after there has been unlearning” (Starbuck, 1996). This view argues that certain routines, rules, tasks, roles, policies, values and strategies need to be forgotten before new organizational knowledge can be acquired and assimilated (Lei, Slocum and Pitts, 1999). Forgetting is thus viewed as a necessary process for the management of change (Akgün et al., 2007). According to Martin and Phillips (2003), the forgetting process is just as important as the organizational learning process for achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Several ways of forgetting intentionally were described in previous studies. Nystrom and Starbuck (1984: 58) suggest that the way to unlearn during an organizational crisis is by removing top managers as a group. This is because top managers are bolstered by previous successes and adamantly cling to their beliefs and perceptions therefore rationalizing their organizations’ failures. Change in ownership is often another trigger of forgetting (Markoczy, 1994). When an organization is acquired by another, some restructuring in the acquired company takes place in order to align its routines and processes. Finally, Martin and Phillips (2004), describe purposeful modes of organizational forgetting related to international alliances in the tourism industry. In this field research the authors describe several examples of voluntary forgetting directly transcribed from interviews. Methodology Theory-building research using cases typically answers research questions that address “how” and “why” in unexplored research areas. To determine the impact of organizational forgetting and the circumstances in which this takes place, we used qualitative data due to its ability to explicate the complex social processes involved. Multiple cases create more robust theory because the propositions are more deeply grounded in varied empirical evidence (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). To this end, we proposed an exploratory study based on two case studies in Higher Education involving situations of organizational forgetting. The cases consist of a longitudinal study of two Engineering degree subjects, which were taught at a European Public University. These subjects were selected for their representation in the degree, for the easy access to the staff that developed these subjects and for the large amount of secondary sources of information that they offered. Subject A was a compulsory subject worth 4.5 credits (45 class hours) taken during the first year of an Engineering degree course, taught on a semi-distance basis during the fall semester. Subject B was a compulsory subject worth 6 credits (60 class hours) taken during the second year of an Engineering course, which was taught on a face-to-face basis during the spring semester. Both subjects involved 8 lecturers and a thousand of students during the research period. The data were gathered in the last semester of 2006 and centred in the forgetting processes that had taken place from their creation in 1998 to 2006. The information required to carry out a study of this nature was not readily available from secondary sources. We therefore collected information from primary sources through several focused interviews on different interest groups. Before collecting these data, we analyzed some secondary information sources (e.g. the lecturer assignment tables and the course guides) in order to identify everyone that had been involved in the two cases during the research period. Moreover, we carried out two pilot interviews of an open-ended nature with a coordinator and a lecturer which allowed us to build the structure and the main topics of the interviews (the staff, teaching materials, students, methodologies used, the learning tools, and the required knowledge to carry out the course) and a set of questions for the following interviews. Both respondents also suggested other people to interview (e.g. former coordinators and some specific students and the Vice-President for Academic Innovation), and some other secondary sources of evidence (e.g. documentation about students’ complaints). The following interviews were personal and private, following a semi-structured script, where we asked them for a short period of time – around an hour – about the evolution and the development of the subject according to the previous topics, as well as their opinions about these events. To increase the reliability of interviews and observational evidence, both authors carried out the interviews together. Finally, we interviewed twelve lecturers and professors involved in both cases during the analyzed period, four course coordinators, the Vice-President for Academic Innovation and a sample of selected students according to some lecturers' suggestions. In some cases, we had to interview informants on several occasions due to conflicting events (e.g. the reasons for modifying some course teaching materials) and new events that we identified after the first interview (e.g. time dedicated to prepare a session). We realized that some informants had not detected loss of knowledge up to the interview due to the fact that they had not considered it before. We collaborated interviews data with information from other secondary sources in order to avoid bias, poor recall and poor or inaccurate articulation. Moreover, these secondary sources allowed us to complement, to some degree, the lack of information obtained from the interviews (e.g. some changes in course teaching materials). Finally, we gathered information from the following historical documents: teaching guides, course guides, course evaluation questionnaires, lecturers assignation tables, students’ complaints, slide collections and teaching handbooks. These documents allowed us to identify, mainly, changes in teaching materials and the goals of the subjects (e.g. a new version of the textbook and new topics in the course contents). These secondary sources of information were used to triangulate the validity of our findings (Eisenhardt, 1989). Analysis We gathered a huge amount of data from the previous information sources, so we reduced and processed it following the strategies proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994). The reduction of the data was made by means of successive codifications of the collected data from the interviews and the historical materials. This codification permitted us to reduce this large amount of data into a smaller number of analytic units. The process used to reduce the data followed a two-level schema. Firstly, we built a general accounting scheme for codes in order to structure the gathered data. This scheme, which followed the suggestions of Lofland (1971), was made up by acts (e.g. change of the textbook), activities (e.g. teaching methodologies), meanings (e.g. comments about the results of the course), participation (e.g. students and teachers’ behaviour), relationships (e.g. working atmosphere), settings (e.g. kind of studies: distance versus non-distance), strategies (e.g. goals of activities and acts) and methods (e.g. the time lost feeling). The second level was more specific and related to the objective of the research. To achieve the aim of answering the research questions, the pattern coding of data at this level centred on identifying all the fragments that referred to the acquisition and loss of knowledge in each case, as well as all codified elements involved in these processes including the possible specific causes and consequences of this acquisition or loss of knowledge. This step of codification took a great deal of time due to problems in differentiating between the processes of forgetting and their causes (e.g. lecturer’s turnover versus knowledge embodied in this lecturer), and we even had to gather complementary data on certain occasions through two new interviews to complete the context where a loss of knowledge took place (e.g. a reason to change the course intranet). Within-Case Analysis Following the suggestions of Miles and Huberman (1994), we carried out a Within-Site Analysis of every case in order to display an organized and compressed assembly of codified information that allows for conclusion drawing and subsequent action. Firstly, we developed a checklist matrix to coherently organize several components for every case. These matrices showed the different sources of data in rows and the topics or codes (both the codes from the first step and the second step) in columns. The matrices allowed us to display the information sources of the codified elements and their reliability and importance according to the number of sources that corroborated them. Again, we gathered complementary data to check some events due to the fact that they came from only one secondary information source (e.g. updating of the slide collection). From each matrix, we generated a Time-Ordered Matrix that showed the several organizational processes throughout the study period. From the matrices, we re-analyzed the forgetting of organizational knowledge that we had identified previously. As a result of the former analysis, some events, which had been codified as forgetting processes, were erased due to lack of clear evidence. As a result, as many as 10 situations could be singled out in which the forgetting of organizational knowledge occurred in the first case study (Subject A). Brief descriptions of these situations are listed in the following list.  OF1: Change of teaching methodology used by lecturers: face-to-face teaching skills were replaced by distance teaching skills in 2000.  OF2: Loss of the specific technical knowledge embodied in the coordinator due to him leaving unexpectedly in 2003.  OF3: Loss of dynamics in the way in which the course was run and managed due to a change in coordinator in 2003.  OF4: Loss of the teaching material because the former coordinator didn’t leave any own written document in 2003.  OF5: Replacement of all the teaching materials used previously due to a redesign of the course in 2005.  OF6: Amount of time dedicated to re-prepare the classroom sessions due to the length of time between two consecutive courses.  OF7: The experience gained by lecturers in classroom sessions was not used in the following academic year.  OF8: Closure of the teaching intranet and opening of a new intranet due to a new Software University Policy in 2006.  OF9: Change in lecturers’ teaching methodology in 2006: distance teaching skills focusing on self-training were replaced by skills based on group learning due to the available tools in the new intranet.  OF10: Replacement of part of the teaching materials due to the characteristics of the new intranet in 2006. In the second case study (Subject B) we identified up to 9 instances of forgetting of organizational knowledge.  OF11: Loss of specific technical knowledge embodied in the coordinator when he left the course in 1999.  OF12: Change of teaching methodology applied by lecturers in 2002: change in the teaching skills needed for teaching a more lecture-oriented subject, according to the perspectives and style of the new coordinator.  OF13: Updating of the slide collection, involving the elimination of 30% of existing materials per year.  OF14: Elimination of 100% of the news articles to be commented on by students at the end of each course.  OF15: Replacement of the book of scientific papers with a collection of selected scientific articles in 2001.  OF16: Replacement of 75% of case studies to improve the consistency between the lectures on concepts and the discussion of case studies in 2003.  OF17: Replacement of the complete collection of case studies with a book of cases to make the materials more accessible to students in 2004.  OF18: Replacement of the textbook with a new revised edition in 2004.  OF19: Projects and presentations prepared by students discarded at the end of each course.