How Can Organizational Memory Theories Contribute to Organizational Memory Systems?

Organizational memory systems (OMS) support organizations to ensure organizational learning, flexibility and efficiency and the management of change. The paper describes the term organizational memory and reviews a set of theories contributing to this field. As organizational memory is considered interdisciplinary, theories are drawn from research fields as different as organization science, psychology, sociology and artificial intelligence. The consequence is that the design of information systems supporting organizational memory has to be seen in this very specific context which leads to different perspectives contrasting traditional software development. These different perspectives are integrated into our view on organizational memory systems. The paper is concluded by an outlook on the main research questions which we intend to address in our research.