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There is much interest in organizational knowledge following the recognition of its strategic place in inter‐firm competition, but there is no adequate theory of such knowledge, or of its acquisition, storage and application. Penrose’s (1959) theory of the growth of the firm, Nelson and Winter’s (1982) evolutionary economics, and the gestalt notions of discontinuous perceptual change taken from Lewin (1935), still define the cutting edge of the learning and knowledge‐based approaches to the firm. Compared with these field‐shaping works, the recent literature on organizational knowledge, learning and memory seems inconclusive. Takes a new start from the Jamesian distinction between knowing what and knowing how, and the Durkheimian distinction between individual and social forms of knowledge. The resulting pluralistic organizational epistemology implies a dynamic theory of the firm as a dialectical system of knowledge processes.

Reform efforts increasingly promote collaboration among faculty and staff in schools with the intent to increase student achievement. Central to this literature is a focus on the members of the school's community to learn as individuals and as a community. Called organizational learning, this discussion has most commonly developed notions of knowledge acquisition and use, this study extends existing theory in organizational learning to include the construct of memory as an important organizational tool for staff and faculty to advance innovation and student achievement. Key to the school organization's ability to use memory in ways that foster the potential for change are the organizational member's capacity for using data within the school structure, to develop both information systems and knowledge structures, the group's ability to develop a coherent and shared memory of events and practices and school leader's capacity to apply aspects of wisdom theory to each problem resolving opportunity.

Organizational attention is an underdeveloped construct that can account for a variety of organizational phenomena. Attention is the means by which individuals select and process a limited amount of input from the enormous amount of internal and environmental inputs bombarding the senses, memories and other cognitive processes. This article develops a coherent theory of organizational attention, drawing on Cornelissenșs domain-interactive metaphor model. Topics that form the building blocks of individual attention research, including selective and divided attention, automatic versus controlled processes, attention and memory, attention and learning, are examined in terms of their applicability to the organizational context.

Intellectual capital includes what employees know and the agility to search and retrieve knowledge (organizational agility). Organizational agility could be seen as the result of using validated routines and protocols (knowledge application), but also as the result of using unproven theories, rumors, colloquial expressions, or sayings (counter-knowledge), which means that organizational memory may enable both the application of good knowledge and the mitigation of counter-knowledge. This study examines the links between a firm's organizational memory, counter-knowledge, knowledge application, and organizational agility.

Using SmartPLS 3.2.8 in a sample of 112 companies, the following questions were addressed: Does the improvement of organizational memory result in the growth of organizational agility? Does the growth of counter-knowledge and knowledge application at the same time hinder the enhancement of organizational agility?

The results support that organizational memory not only enhances the application of gained knowledge but also allows the spreading of rumors, gossip, and inappropriate or false beliefs (counter-knowledge). Furthermore, results support that the knowledge that emerges from the development in parallel or simultaneous of counter-knowledge and knowledge application provides bad references, which will lead to a degradation of organizational agility.

When supporting organizational agility, managers should be conscious of the urgency of counteracting the misuse of counter-knowledge.

These findings make an important contribution to what is potentially a barrier to innovation and creativity, helping managers overcome the problems associated with misunderstandings or wrong assumptions derived from counter-knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between transactive memory systems and organizational innovation. Several recent studies have discussed the positive relationship between these two entities. Yet, very few studies have demonstrated how transactive memory systems are related to leadership and innovation. This study investigates this tripartite relationship, finding that developmental leadership exerts a mediating effect on the relationship between transactive memory systems and organizational innovation.

In examining this relationship, 224 participants from an electronics company in South Korea were surveyed. Structural equation modeling was used to enable the identification of simultaneous interactive relationships among the three research variables.

Contrary to previous research results, transactive memory systems were found not to be significantly related to organizational innovation. Results also indicated that transactive memory systems comprise a statistically significant variable that influences developmental leadership. Subsequently, developmental leadership can be considered to be a valid construct in predicting organizational innovation; it can also be seen to fully mediate the relationship between transactive memory systems and organizational innovation.

These results have theoretical and managerial implications. As transactive memory systems do not always precede organizational innovation, knowledge of “who knows what” is not enough to ensure innovative performances. To accelerate organizational innovation, intentional managerial interventions such as developmental leadership are accordingly necessary.

In the long term, all organisations may be temporary. Some, however, are more temporary than others. Temporary organisations are designed not so much with an eye on enduring as on accomplishing a specific task. In this chapter, the authors explore paradoxes, understood as persistent mutually defining oppositions that occur at the intersection of ‘the temporary’ and ‘the enduring’. To do so, the authors discuss the concept of memory, which we use to explore the process of preserving and reproducing memories of people and events as a bridge between the temporalities of organising that are past and were never intended to endure, and those that are ongoing. By reconstructing one case of the European Capital of Culture initiative, the authors discuss memory as critical to temporary organisations in the sense that temporary organisations always have a memory that affords continuity: hence are enduring. The authors argue that there is endurance in the temporary and temporariness in endurance: expressing the paradoxical essence of organising.

This study aims to explore the influence of social interaction processes on transactive memory system (TMS) practice, the mediation of knowledge integration to the relationship between TMS and team performance and the moderation of team psychological safety to the relationship among TMS, knowledge intentions and team performance.

The authors collected data from a sample of 366 team members from 55 research and development (R&D) teams in Taiwan and conduct the analysis using the partial least squares method.

The results of this study indicate that social interaction processes have a positive effect on a TMS; a TMS can foster team performance, but knowledge integration mediates the relationship between the TMS and team performance; and team psychological safety can moderate the relationship between the TMS, knowledge integration and team performance.

Existing studies not only fail to explore the influence of social interaction processes on a TMS practice but also lack empirical analyses to explore knowledge integration as a mediator and team psychological safety as a moderator. This study fills that gap by developing a model that includes these types of relationships and suggests the importance of the TMS in the context of R&D.

This paper argues that the combination of factors that facilitate focal and peripheral vision represent two distinct types of knowledge corridors. While focal vision may help detect signals that relate to the current objectives of the firm, peripheral vision is directed to non-central issues that may provide signals that relate to emerging trends in the external environment. Ambidexterity vision refers to the tension between these two different business visions within the same organization. This paper aims to examine the significance of procedural memory to an organization’s ambidexterity vision, along with investigating the impact procedural memory has on organizational learning.

The research conducted in this study addresses the following two questions: Does the enhancement of procedural memory result in the development of superior ambidexterity vision? Does the simultaneous development of both focal and peripheral vision enhance organizational learning? These research questions are studied by conducting an empirical investigation involving data provided by 203 banking employees. These data are analysed using a structural equation modelling approach.

Analysis of the data provides support for the existence of a relationship between ambidexterity vision and organizational learning.

The findings suggest that the re-direction of managers’ perceptions to supporting and enhancing an ambidexterity vision is likely to result in an improvement in their ability to identify emerging trends, new and emerging customers and potential shifts in customer needs and tastes.

This work suggests that the re-direction of managers’ perceptions to supporting and enhancing an ambidexterity vision is likely to result in an improvement in their ability to identify emerging trends, new and emerging customers and potential shifts in customer needs and tastes.

This study aims to develops the decomposed model to examine the influence of knowledge management orientation (KMO) dimensions (organizational memory, knowledge sharing, knowledge absorption and knowledge receptivity) on balanced scorecard outcomes (learning and growth, internal process, customer satisfaction and financial performance).

Survey data from 244 managers (in charge of KM projects in their companies) in large Taiwanese firms were collected and used to test the decomposed model using the structural equation modeling approach.

This study finds that knowledge sharing is the strongest predictor of internal process performance, while knowledge absorption is pivotal in improving customer satisfaction. The results also show that non-financial performance measures (i.e. learning and growth, internal process and customer satisfaction) directly and indirectly affect financial performance through cause-and-effect relationships.

In an increasingly dynamic environment, the building of internal knowledge stocks is likely insufficient, but knowledge must be moved between a firm and external entities (e.g. customers, business partners and education and research institutes) (i.e. building knowledge flows) to achieve increased customer satisfaction and financial performance.

Theoretically, the findings of this study suggest that the decomposed approach helps to understand the complex relationships embodied in the KMO–performance link, which cannot be surmised using a composite model. From the managerial perspective, the findings of this study may help academics and managers design and sustain KMO implementation throughout the organization to achieve higher effectiveness, efficiency and profitability.

Project team members frequently need to learn things already known in other projects, i.e. they need to acquire and assimilate organisational memory. The literature mentions numerous different types of repositories which form an organisational memory, and where organisational knowledge is maintained and into which newly‐acquired knowledge is deposited for later use by other people and teams. However, only seldom does the literature mention individuals' personal notes as a repository of knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to deal with the question of what is the role of individuals' personal notes in remembering in a project work context.

The conceptual part of the paper deals with the concepts of knowledge, organisational memory, knowledge sharing and motivation to share knowledge. The special focus in this connection is on the external memory aids and individuals' personal notes. Owing to the need to attain a better understanding of the role of individuals' personal notes in a project work context, results of an empirical study conducted in several Finnish project‐based companies are described in detail.

The results of the study suggest that the project team members' personal notes may play a very important role on the individual level and a rather important role on the team level of project work.

Personal notes making and utilisation of these notes as an external memory aid represents a challenge that many project‐based organisations are only now beginning to acknowledge.