"Managing Organizational Forgetting"

P. de Holan, N. Phillips, and T. Lawrence

MIT Sloan Management Review

Winter 2004, pp. 45-51

Over the past decade, there has been much interest in how organizations manage their organizational knowledge. The authors of this article say that the focus on organizational learning has tended to overlook the importance of organizational forgetting. The involuntary loss of organizational knowledge is costing companies large sums of money every year. Also, organizations must often forget old knowledge that traps them in the past.

Forgetting can be categorized along two dimensions: (1) accidental vs. intentional forgetting—"Accidental forgetting is most often associated with the loss of valuable knowledge, which reduces a company's competitiveness…Intentional forgetting, on the other hand, can result in increased competitiveness. If a company manages it properly, intentional forgetting can rid the organization of knowledge that has been producing dysfunctional outcomes"; and (2) entrenched vs. new knowledge—"Processes associated with forgetting things deeply embedded in a company's memory are very different from those associated with new knowledge, which can be shed more easily before it becomes widely known and established."

Combining the possibilities from the above dimension, there are four different possible forms of organizational forgetting:

• Memory decay—This is accidental forgetting of entrenched knowledge. Methods to deal with this are: Finding the true locations of organizational knowledge, and maintaining organizational memory as a strategic imperative.
• Failure to capture—This is accidental forgetting of newly innovated knowledge. Methods to deal with this are: Replicating new knowledge across individuals and linking the old to the new.
• Unlearning—This is intentional forgetting of entrenched knowledge. Methods to deal with this are: Breaking routines and practices, and divesting businesses.
• Avoiding bad habits—This is intentional forgetting of newly innovated knowledge. Methods to deal with this are: Don't over-learn from either failure or success, and isolate yourself from partners' bad habits.

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