Learning, memory and technology: some initial considerations

• Authors: Monica Divitini;Carla Simone
• Venue: ACM SIGOIS Bulletin
• Year: 1996

The literature about organizational learning, and consequentlyabout organizational memory, suggests various motivations leadingan organization to consider these topics as part of its managementstrategies: among the others, improving the capability of handlingexceptions, reducing the cost of the personnel turn-over, enhancingthe consciousness of the organizational members about their dynamiccontext to improve creativity or positive attitudes towardcooperation. Even if these motivations can coexist in the sameframework, each of them defines different requirements of thestrategies and tools necessary to improve memory and learning alongeach specific dimension. Our first point is therefore that whenspeaking about memory and learning one has to make clear theirscope within the organization. Otherwise, the argumentation becomestoo confused and the possible strategies not fully comparable. Ourfocus on learning and memory is aimed at increasing people'scapability to deal with new situations (like, e.g., exceptions andcritical situations) in contexts characterized by dynamic demandscoming from the organization and its environment. Moreover, ourfocus is on articulation work --i.e. on the additional activitiesthat are required in order to coordinate, schedule, integrate, etc.cooperative activities-- more that on the domain specific workactivities oriented towards the field of work (Schmidt and Simone,1996) As in the case of human beings, organizational learning is theoutcome of some unconscious activities, that can be seen as anatural by-product of usual working practices and of conscious,even if not planned, activities which require a specific attentionand effort. From a management point of view, the organizations thatwant to increase their capability of learning have to be preparedto pay a specific cost: in fact, conscious activities require aspecific investment in terms of people and resources to make themhappen. On the other hand, unconscious activities require aspecific investment in terms of understanding the relatedmechanisms so that organizational strategies and technologicalsolutions are not disrupting this background process. Our secondpoint is that the definition of these strategies and solutions haveto take into account learning as a constitutive part of theevery-day activities in both of the above mentioned aspects. Inparticular, the design of the technology supporting the(cooperative) work has to take into consideration from the verybeginning the aspects that are related to the associated learningprocess.The next question is then: which is the possible role of thetechnology in the learning process? Our answer is driven by twobasic considerations: first of all, the limited capability of thetechnology which is basically able just to recognize events andreact to them in some way, and to store and retrieve some clusterof facts/pieces of information. Secondly, and in strict relation tothe previous point, the fact that the exploitation of thesecapabilities does not imply anything about how human beingsactually learn and maintain their memory. In the best case,technology is just a useful support.Then the technology can support the learning activity byrecording facts and information together with the context in whichthey happened or were produced, and by allowing a flexible readingof what has been recorded so as to support its continuousrediscovery. Moreover, the technology can trigger learningprocesses by increasing the awareness of relevant events. Ofcourse, what is important to be recorded and what is a relevantevent is context dependent, and is the outcome of some possiblyimplicit negotiation among the actors. Consequently, the technologycan be supportive if it is open to this evolution both in relationto individual and group interests. This is a way to bridge the gapbetween individual and group learning (Cook and Yanow, 1993), byallowing for individual elaborations and for their collaborativeintegration.In the following, we will focus on artefacts. These are,together with their meaning and the conventions related to theiruse, an essential component of the organizational memory. In orderto understand how organizational memory can be organized to beeffective for the organization, it is necessary, first of all, tounderstand how artefacts take shape, i.e. how they are developedand how they are given a meaning. Second, to understand how thismeaning is shared through the members of an organization. In fact,interaction among people increases the sharing of experience aboutthe work domain, while distributedness increases the opacity amongthe sub-groups that are dynamically constituted to cooperativelysolve problems. Third, it is necessary to understand the mechanismsthat allow individuals and (sub-)groups to keep their"memory" updated with the evolution of theorganization.In particular, we'll consider the specific kind of artifactsthat emerge within work group in order to reduce the complexity ofarticulating cooperative activities --like, for example,classification schemes, time tables, and flight strips. Togetherwith the artefact, a series of conventions and procedures aredeveloped in order to describe its suggested/required use.Artefacts (with the related procedures and conventions) can be seenas the actualization of a learning process bythe group that will use them. In this respect, artefacts constitutealong term memory as they are the synthesis of past experiencesthat make explicit which information are relevant in a certainenvironment. Actually, procedures and conventions in this case canbe seen as 'precomputations' that abstract from the very detaileddescription of what has to be done and only define a space ofpossible choices. These pre-computations can be considered as asource for the organizational memory, since they can be adopted byless experienced actors as a script, by more skilled people as amap, and in any case be adapted to the current situation (Suchman,1987; Schmidt and Simone, 1996).In their instantiated form, i.e. when they are used within aspecific process, artefacts represent a "short term memory" for the(sub)group involved in the process or for members of theorganization that need to be aware of its status.The association of a meaning to artefacts and to the objectsrelated to a working group is very complex. In fact, it is notpossible to define a prior a knowledge that istrue for every member of the group and in everycontext. The meaning is the result of complex social interactions,that is the product of a cooperative effort that can possibly makeuse of specific artefacts and precomputations in the sensementioned above. In this perspective, we want to recall a previousstudy on the process of naming within a group (Divitini and Simone,1994). This allowed us to point out that the naming of objects whenpeople take commitments (and, more in general, the knowledge onthese objects) is the result of the communication processes thedifferent members of the group take part in. A sensible support tothe cooperative effort can be conceived only taking into accountthese processes.It is important to note that within a group is not alwaysnecessary (nor desirable) that all the people involved in a processshare the same knowledge about it. Often, it is enough, in order tomake cooperation effective, to reach a minimal consensus. Theknowledge that each participant to the process must have deeplydepends on her role, her responsibility, her pre-understanding ofthe situation. Communication tend naturally to increase theknowledge sharing. Moreover, communication can be activated as areaction to the arising of misunderstandings, ambiguities,breakdowns. In these cases, people often use communication in orderto solve them and make action possible. From this perspective,organizational memory, can provide a means to reduce some of thiscommunicative overhead or to remedy to a contingent impossibilityin the communication.