|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total recall, in individuals or organizations, is neither desirable nor possible. There are indeed several good reasons for organizations to forget things about their own past. First, it might be the case that rediscovery is easier than remembering. This is especially so where the overhead of constructing a sufficiently precise archive, for a fine-grained situational memory, is high. For example, airline companies frequently do not retain a record of one's food or seating options. They process passengers anew each time they are encountered, which is easier from a data processing perspective. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Extending Chandler (1977), one can see the development of statistics as a filtering mechanism that allows a central office not to have to remember everything about a company's day-to-day running to make things run smoothly. The filtering works as proactive forgetting. Railroad companies do not need to know which particular piece of rolling stock is located where, but simply how many pieces of such and such a kind there are at any given location. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another positive mode of forgetting occurs when an organization wants to change its identity. Here the argument that "we have always done things this way" stands in the way of breaking new ground. Hughes (1989 [1883]) described the change at Rugby school under Arnold in this light. He showed how Arnold imperceptibly changed the way things were done in this tradition-bound institution, such that group memory was never mobilized against the changes. Recent work in organizational theory has suggested that perhaps it is good on occasion to forget everything about the past to start over without being trapped in old routines (Wackers 1995). In general, if a set of archives indexed by a given classification scheme is being used as a tool of reification or projection, then it can have harmful consequences. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This chapter describes how organizations use classification schemes to selectively forget things about the past in the process of producing knowledge. We argue that there are two major kinds of organizational forgetting in the process of producing and then maintaining classification systems in the workplace: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Clearancethe erection of a barrier in the past at a certain point so that no information or knowledge can leak through to the present. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Erasurethe ongoing destruction of selective traces in the present. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Standardized classification systems may permit the organization to move from heterogeneous forms of memory operating within multiple frameworks to the privileging of a form of memory (potential memory) |
|
|
|
|
|