This research examines a collaborative solution to a common problem, that of providing help to distributed users. The Answer Garden 2 system provides a secondgeneration architecture for organizational and community memory applications. After describing the need for Answer Garden 2’s functionality, we describe the architecture of the system and two underlying systems, the Cafe ConstructionKit and Collaborative Refinery. We also present detailed descriptions of the collaborative help and collaborative refining facilities in the Answer Garden 2 system.

The term organizational memory is due for an overhaul. Memory appears to be everywhere in organizations; yet, the term has been limited to a few uses. In this paper we examine what memory in an organization really is. Based on an ethnographic study of a telephone hotline group, this paper presents a micro-level analysis of a hotline call, the work activity surrounding the call, and the memory used in the work activity. We do this analysis from the viewpoint of distributed cognition theory, finding it fruitful for an understanding of an organization's memory. Keywords Organizational memory, knowledge management, collective memory, group memory, information sharing, distributed cognition, CSCW, computer-supported cooperative work INTRODUCTION The term organizational memory has been overworked and confused. Burdened with the requirement to reuse experience, the term organizational memory obscures and ignores critical functions of the organization's memory. Instead, only some forms of ...

This paper reports fieldwork from the electrical utilities industry, examining the suitability of current knowledge management perspectives to the day-to-day work of mobile staff. Reporting the results of the empirical study, we make a distinction between four aspects of local and mobile "knowledge management" as it took place in the mobile work setting: sharing, i.e., several parties exchange knowledge; indexing, i.e., one party explains to another what knowledge to retrieve; diagnosing, i.e., two parties make sense of how to interpret a situation, and; foreseeing, i.e., one party (or more) uses knowledge to project the future. We compare and contrast the empirical findings with current knowledge management perspectives, and outline an initial sketch of a framework for "practical knowledge management."

The term organizational memory is due for an overhaul. Memory appears to be everywhere in organizations; yet, the term has been limited to only a few uses. Based on an ethnographic study of a telephone hotline group, this paper presents a micro-level, distributed cognition analysis of two hotline calls, the work activity surrounding the calls, and the memory used in the work activity. We find a number of interesting theoretical concepts that are useful in further describing and analyzing organizational memory.

This paper considers the nature of medical work and how new telemedicine technologies can be developed to support that work. Telemedicine developers attempt to increase communication and collaboration between medical practitioners and between patients and medics, with the goal being to make medical care and information more easily accessible. However, the focus of telemedicine systems appears to have so far been technology centred, and the work they are trying to support is often ignored. We argue that to develop appropriate telemedicine technologies, it is important to understand the nature of medical work, and to examine the manner in which medical practice actually occurs. Only then will we be in a position to design appropriate telemedicine technologies to support these activities. Unless designers have an insight into the work itself, new technologies will continue to fail to support what telemedicine effectively aims to promote - collaboration and access to distributed knowledge.

ii Acknowledgements Yesterday I was telling myself: “I will never be able to find the time to write my acknowledgements! ” I was in one of those 2-b-doctor moods, you know: loneliness, very negative moods, and feeling such as ‘I will never make it! ’ Anyway all this just to say that I am finally there, even if it seemed to be impossible, unreachable and enormously hard! And if I am there it is thanks to many ‘special ’ people I was so lucky to meet on my way. I want to thank Professor Dino Borri, for giving me the space, the freedom and support to develop as a student and to become the researcher that I am now. It has always been very important for me to have his consideration, and I really hope he will appreciate this work. I am immensely grateful to Grazia Concilio, who has been a friend other than one of my supervisors. Many people say that we are very similar, that we have even the same voice and way to talk (!). Well, this doesn’t surprise me, because we have shared every single step and thought that is part of this work, every single day,

Information and Communication Technologies have transformed the way people work and have a growing impact on long life learning. Organizational Learning is an increasingly important area of research that concerns the way organizations learn and thus augment their competitive advantage, innovativeness, and effectiveness. Within the project MEMORAe2.0, we are interested by the capitalization of knowledge in the context of an organization, but also by the externalization and capitalization of tacit knowledge that’s why we use a forum in an organizational learning context. We developed the E-MEMORAe2.0 environment which is based on the concept of learning organizational memory. This environment is meant to be used by a Semantic Learning Organization as support for Organizational Learning. In such an environment, actors of the organization use, produce and exchange documents and knowledge. To that end, they have to access the resources and to adapt them to their needs. In this paper, we present the organizational learning approach, we stress the role of an organizational memory in this approach and we specify the use of a forum concept in such a context. Then we present the approach MEMORAe, the environment we developed and the first evaluation of this environment.

Abstract not found

Abstract not found

Knowledge is the important asset in organizations. Effective knowledge management plays a crucial role in organizational development. Organizational memory (OM) integrates all kinds of organizational knowledge. It is regarded as the central prerequisite for IT support of knowledge management. The paper analyzes the knowledge structure of OM in manufacturing company from internal and external sources of organizational knowledge. OM in manufacturing company is composed of four types, that is, managerial OM, technical OM, cultural OM and marketing OM. These four types of OM components enhance organizational development jointly. Based on the data from International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS), factor analysis is used to test the classification of OM and organizational performance (OP), canonical correlation analysis is conducted on the impact of OM components on OP in manufacturing companies. The results from structural equation modeling suggest that OM is a dynamic factor, OM formed in different time has different impact on OP.