Organizational forgetting

Architecture, as a synthetic physical act, has long been a common and prevalent means of giving a commemorative presence to memory. However, just like memory, a finite selective process, architecture inescapably embodies an act of exclusion as well. Moreover, by giving physicality to memory, architecture offers simultaneously its means of annihilation, thus becoming an ideal means of achieving its antithesis, oblivion. Hence an inherent relationship emerges between architecture and forgetting that seems to only parallel the ontological intertwining of memory and forgetfulness. As such architecture, in its vulnerable physicality, becomes an ideal vehicle for memory, as well as its inherent antithesis, forgetting.

Yet the question of memory, and forgetfulness—especially in the particular context of this study, that of the Lebanese war—is an essentially political one as well. Why remember? Why forget? What to remember? And what to forget? The arguments generated by these questions reveal ethical, social and political necessities, and inevitabilities, for the intertwining of memory and forgetting. Thus a program that reflects the intertwined relationship between its antagonistic components: one that aims to facilitate forgetting of the memory of the war while inescapably reminding of it; and one that aims to register the memory of the war, but inescapably promoting ambivalence towards that memory by means of its very intention.

The site as well reflects the same antithetical intertwining of memory and forgetting. Situated in the pre-war center of the city of Beirut, the site is saturated with memory of the throbbing pre-war life of the city—as well as its destruction, and its poignant present absence. Being at the eye of the Green Line, the battlefield zone that divided the city in half during the war, that part of the city witnessed the heaviest destruction during the war. As a result, in post-war Beirut, that area of the city has become a gaping void, an immense absence at the heart of the city. For a whole generation of Lebanese youth, a generation that has known the life of the city only in the multiple ‘centers’ that proliferated at its periphery during the war, the old heart of Beirut is no more that a blank slate onto which their parents’ memories are projected. Thus, in the slowly emerging new life of this part of the city, memory and oblivion are juxtaposed.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

An increasing number of organizations are turning to knowledge-based organizations. Thus, these firms pay attention to innovation and creativity more and more. Therefore, this study focused on the mediating role of organizational forgetting in the LMX- creative work involvement relationship. Data (N= 418) collected in knowledge-based organizations in north of Iran and confirmed our assumptions on the mediating role of organizational forgetting. The indirect relationship between LMX and creative work involvement through organizational forgetting was stronger than direct effect. Our findings, point to the importance of considering the leader-member relationship and organizational forgetting issues for increasing employees’ creative work involvement.

The aim of this study was to clarify the concept of organizational forgetting by reviewing the related literature. First, the study will focus on the concept of forgetting in general. Then, the related concepts will be clarified and the concept of organizational forgetting will be explained. Future directions that researchers in this field may focus on will be stated and finally, the conclusions of the study will be made. This and similar studies are of importance since the concept of organizational forgetting has been eclipsed by the more popular concept of organizational learning.

Purpose: The purposes of this paper are to determine the impact of Organizational Forgetting on Organizational Performance (OP) at pharmaceutical industry in Egypt. Design/methodology/approach: The present study is conducted by descriptive-survey method and its population consists of employees at Sadat University in Egypt. 240 standard questionnaires were distributed of which 200 questionnaires (83%) were returned. To gather data, OF questionnaire devised by Fernandez & Sun, (2009) and Moshabbeki et al., (2012), and OP questionnaire devised by Darroch, 2003; Pathirage, et al., 2007; and Chen & Mohamed (2008) are used. Findings: The research confirmed a conceptual model for OF. Moreover, research results showed that there is a meaningful relationship between OF and OP. Results of this research suggest managers to develop their capacity of Knowledge Management (KM) in order to improve their OP. The improvement will be gained when learning process has been done through intentional OF. Research limitations/implications: This research helps to stimulate scientific research, particularly in terms of testing the model content, as well as studying the study variables and the factors affecting them. This study also has some limitations. First, this paper just focuses on organizations to find new perspective for the OF literature. Second, because of the scope of this research, interviewees are limited to individuals who have knowledge or take any seminars related to field of this sector. Other sectors also must be considered to attain detailed knowledge related to OF because case-specific studies will bring new dimensions to the literature of OF. Originality/value: First, this study makes a research contribution to the field of OF because studies related to OF consist of conceptual papers. Second, I have introduced two new perspective to the concept of OF through this research paper. Third, forgetting is the necessary counterpart of learning, and that attempts to manage knowledge must also include attempts to manage forgetting.

This article is a reflection on organizational oblivion, viewed as an archetypical antonym of learning. The consequences of this kind of forgetting for the organizational identity construction are described as a narrative project. We refer to the image of Lethe, an archetype of forgetting, to depict how forgetting directly affects the process of identity narrative construction. In this perspective, drinking from the waters of Lethe implies not just the loss of knowledge or memories of how things are done, but the loss of identity so that the individuals do not know who they are anymore. In this context, forgetting disrupts organizational narrative which ceases to be a coherent story and results in organizational identity loss.

How organizations create, transfer, and retain knowledge has been the focus of intensive investigation by management researchers. However, one aspect of the dynamics of knowledge—organizational forgetting— has received comparatively little attention. In this paper, we draw on an exploratory, multiple-case study of learning in international strategic alliances to explore how and why organizations forget.

Based on our case study, we develop a theory of organizational forgetting, discuss the role of forgetting in the dynamics of organizational knowledge, and present a typology of types of organizational forgetting.

How is collective remembering inhibited by organisational changes which were not intended to manipulate it? And how does collective forgetting affect workers' power and sense of identity? We rely on an ethnographic study of a charity organisation that went through recent organisational change to study two processes constitutive of collective forgetting. The first process consists in the past becoming unusable because once-useful memories lost their practical usefulness for participants' new activities. The second process consists in the past becoming uprooted because the social relations through which memories used to be shared had changed beyond recognition. Our findings provide insights into the organisational processes through which memories cease to circulate. They also help understand the complex relations between memory, power relations and participants' sense of identity.

Appropriateness and cognitive "goodness of fit"?
Memorability and number factors?
Memorability and symmetry
Memorability and types of number recognized by mathematics?
Memorability and periodicity
Periodic pattern language as a mnemonic aid to distinguishing strategic styles?
Music and aesthetics as mnemonic aids to governance
Rote learning of strategically relevant patterns?
Methodology with respect to the questionable role of numbers
Designing strategic declarations -- memorable or forgettable?
Towards memorable strategic architecture -- and its appreciation
Strategic architecture by numbers and numerical cognition?

Purpose: The purposes of this paper are to determine the relationship between Organizational Forgetting (OF) and Leadership Styles (LS) at Teaching Hospitals in Egypt.
Design/methodology/approach: The present study is conducted by descriptive- survey method and its population consists of employees at Teaching Hospitals in Egypt. 240 standard questionnaires were distributed of which 200 questionnaires (83%) were returned. To gather data, OF questionnaire devised by Fernandez & Sun, (2009) and Moshabbeki et al., (2012), and LS questionnaire devised by Bass & Avolio, 1990; Popper & Lipshitz, 2000; Jung & Avolio, 2000; Sarros & Santora, 2001; Avolio & Bass, 2002; Stone, et al., 2004; Vera & Crossan, 2004) are used.
Findings: The research confirmed a conceptual model for OF. Moreover, research results showed that there is a meaningful relationship between OF and LS. Results also indicate that OF impacts on LS. The results show that there is a meaningful relationship between OF and TALS. Also, the results show that there is a meaningful relationship between OF and TFLS.
Research limitations/implications: The study provides a set of recommendations that included the need for Transactional Leadership Styles (TALS) in general, and Transformational Leadership Style (TFLS) in particular, in order to increase the performance of the employees at Teaching Hospitals in Egypt and enhance competitive advantage of these organizations. This study has some limitations. First, this paper just focuses on organizations to find new perspective for the OF literature. Second, because of the scope of this research, interviewees are limited to individuals who have knowledge or take any seminars related to field of this sector. Other sectors also must be considered to attain detailed knowledge related to OF because case-specific studies will bring new dimensions to the literature of OF.
Originality/value: First, this study makes a research contribution to the field of OF because studies related to OF mostly consist of conceptual papers. Second, I have introduced two new perspective to the concept of OF through this research paper.

In this article, I discuss how memorials exist in time by conceptualising memory politics in relation to monumental neglect and a lack of maintenance work. I also study the way political discourses have material resonances by foregrounding how the Soviet memory is silenced in Estonia through the crumbling materiality of its cultural heritage – as a slow-motion sacrifice. In my research, I focused on the Maarjamäe memorial complex in Tallinn (which comprises a Soviet monumental landscape design, a cemetery of German soldiers, a Russian palace currently hosting the Estonian History Museum and the newly-built memorial of Victims of Communism), to show how part of it has been devalued by the political work of disrepair and institutional neglect, thus presenting the socialist past as something separated from the present. New developments at this site might potentially change its situation of abandonment since the construction of a novel antagonist element – the memorial of Victims of Communism – might produce a more attentive maintenance of the Soviet monumental design (adding another layer of meaning), or its final demolition in turn (thus producing a haunting afterlife). In any case, Maarjamäe makes clear that material memorials never simply speak for themselves and are, instead, multiple and contested in meaning. It also shows that if the tidiness of a memorial is the reminder of an obligation to remember, then its neglect can be but an invitation to forget, or to remember badly.

Purpose: The concepts of Organizational Forgetting (OF) and Organizational (OL) Learning are considered somehow opposite. But are we able to learn without forgetting?. So, the purpose of this research is to study the relationship between OF and OL at Menoufia university hospitals in Egypt. Design/methodology/approach: The present study is conducted by descriptive-survey method and its population consists of employees at Menoufia University Hospitals in Egypt. 240 standard questionnaires were distributed of which 200 questionnaires (83%) were returned. To gather data, OF questionnaire devised by Fernandez & Sun, (2009) and Moshabbeki et al., (2012), and OL questionnaire devised by American Society for Training and Development (2002) are used. Findings: The research confirmed a conceptual model for OF. Moreover, research results showed that there is a meaningful relationship between OF and OL. The researcher has found that the study subjects do agree that OF directly affects the dimensions of OL at Menoufia university hospitals in Egypt. Research limitations/implications: This research helps to stimulate scientific research, particularly in terms of testing the model content, as well as studying the study variables and the factors affecting them. This study also has some limitations. First, this paper just focuses on organizations to find new perspective for the OF literature. Second, because of the scope of this research, interviewees are limited to individuals who have knowledge or take any seminars related to field of this sector. Other sectors also must be considered to attain detailed knowledge related to OF because case-specific studies will bring new dimensions to the literature of OF. Originality/value: First, this study makes a research contribution to the field of OF because studies related to OF consist of conceptual papers. Second, I have introduced two new perspective to the concept of OF through this research paper. Third, forgetting is the necessary counterpart of learning, and that attempts to manage knowledge must also include attempts to manage forgetting.

After decades of research, the link between organizational learning and competitive advantage is clear: firms that are better at learning are better positioned to take advantage of emerging opportunities and deal with emerging threats, especially ones that require significant organizational change. Firms that are better able to create new knowledge, 'learning organizations', are able to innovate more effectively and adapt to changing environmental conditions more quickly and efficiently, gaining competitive advantage over firms that cannot. Research on the nature of organizational knowledge, the processes that support learning and the barriers that prevent it and the functioning of organizational memory systems has all accumulated rapidly. The result is a well-developed perspective on the management of knowledge that provides an effective framework for research and a useful guide for management practice. We find the progress made in understanding organizational knowledge and organizational learning impressive and the resulting framework useful and convincing. At the same time, based on the results of our research into the knowledge dynamics of international joint ventures (Martin de Holan and Phillips, 2003; Martin de Holan and Phillips, in press; Martin de Holan et al., 2004), 1 we believe that one important dimension of knowledge in organizations deserves much more attention: the dynamics of organizational forgetting. We are convinced that competitiveness is not just about learning; it is also about forgetting the right things at the right times. Deeply entrenched stocks of knowledge can act as barriers to new learning, or even to the recognition of the opportunity to innovate a new product, service or business model. Unneeded stocks of knowledge require expensive management and can consume critical management attention, leading to a loss of competitiveness. Increasing numbers of collaborations mean increasing opportunities to pick up bad habits from partners that must be forgotten quickly before they adversely affect competitiveness. Furthermore, firms can overlearn from bad experiences, leading to organizational dysfunction, loss of competitiveness and a critical need to forget. We believe that managers must become as skilled at managing forgetting as they have become at managing learning and, we will argue here, management

Background: Human capital development in emergency departments of the country has been very slow despite all the efforts of scholars and experts. This study was conducted to investigate the organizational forgetting context and its role in improving the performance of emergency departments of the country through human capital in Shiraz emergency bases. Materials and Methods: This study has a correlational research design. We used the Aledo Ruíz et al. (2017) questionnaire to measure research variables. The statistical population comprised all personnel of the Shiraz emergency bases. The questionnaire was randomly distributed among the staff of Shiraz emergency bases and 136 questionnaires were selected for statistical analysis. To investigate the research hypotheses, we used structural equation analysis with the partial least squares method in SmartPLS software. Results: The results of the data analysis indicated that the exogenous study variables of integration of concepts (β=0.226, P<0.05), coordination of insights (β=0.12, P<0.05), and changing personal habits (β=0.42, P<0.05) have a direct and positive effect on human capital. Also, human capital (β=0.73, P<0.05) was positively correlated with the performance of emergency bases. Conclusion: Findings show that generating organizational forgetting has a positive relationship with human capital. If the employees can develop their skills by reflecting on their past, present, and future decisions or through a dialogue with their managers, they can change their behaviors and ideas and create new ones. So if managers encourage employees to transfer their knowledge to other coworkers and use their expertise to develop new ideas and solutions, they can develop human capital. The findings also indicate a positive relationship between human capital and organizational performance. Thus, if the emergency bases regard organizational forgetting as an early stage in the creation of human capital, they can improve organizational performance. Besides, the results showed that organizational forgetting has an indirect impact on organizational performance through the development and establishing of new capabilities and skills that increase the value of human capital.

Managers are increasingly aware of the importance of managing learning in organizations. Creating organizational processes and structures that allow organizations to learn quickly is a
fundamental requirement for sustained competitive advantage. But our research shows that learning is only one part of knowledge management: competitive advantage depends as much on effectively managing forgetting as it does on managing learning. In this paper, we present the results of a study of organizational forgetting and discuss the importance of understanding and managing forgetting in firms.