Creating Organizational Memory

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Excerpt from Creating Organizational Memory: Systematic, Management and Internal Communication, in Manufacturing Firms, 1880-1920 Organizational memory has existed as long as organizations have. Knowledge of a firm's past has always been embodied in its traditions, operating routines, records, and individuals. But the nature, form, and extent of organizational memory in business enterprises in America changed radically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, driven by the emergence of the systematic management philosophy. One of its major tenets was the need to transcend individual memory in favor of organizational memory, especially in matters of internal management. Under the influence of this philosophy, managers established formal communication systems in part as a vehicle or repository for corporate memory. The communication system came to serve as an embodiment of organizational memory and evolved in ways designed to facilitate the systematic use of the past to serve the present. This paper uses both published and archival materials from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to trace the evolution of the internal communication system as an embodiment of organizational memory. Organizational memory in American firms before the mid-nineteenth century was a matter of individual knowledge and memory, simple routines, and limited records (primarily of transactions involving external parties). Most firms were managed by their owners, who carried most of the knowledge of business methods and past successes and failures in their own heads. These owner/managers were often aided by skilled artisans or foremen, who in turn carried most of the knowledge of technical methods in their heads and hands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.