Organizational Memory

Organizational Memory (OM) can be defined as the way an organization applies past knowledge to present activities. This mini-track focuses on how information technology can assist organizations in capturing, structuring, retaining, and retrieving OM. It represents a primary forum for researchers in this domain to exchange ideas and present research results. We are also striving to make it a springboard for other activities that will expand our understanding of Organizational Memory. In addition to chairing the mini-track this year, we have organized a Task Force that has developed a series of position papers to provide a compendium of the state of the OM research area. Papers have been developed on the following topics: (1) Perspectives: theoretical perspectives of OM, and its relationshipsto organizational science and organizational learning; (2) Systems Development: OM system development issues (including but not restricted to requirements, integration with existing information systems); a summary of existing systems and system types; lessons learned from development; (3) Researching Organizational Memory: what kinds of methods are valid and doable; and (4) Empirical Research: a summary and classification of the empirical research studies that have been published. Our goal is to publish these task force papers as a book. For the minitrack this year we received 11 paper submissions, and accepted seven papers for presentation in two sessions. Papers in the first session address more conceptual OM issues, while the second session papers present systems and system evaluations. The first paper, "An Organizational Memory Information Systems Success Model: An Extension of DeLone and McLean’s I/S Success Model" by Murray Jennex, Lorne Olfman, Pituma Panthawi, and Yong-Tae Park, presents a model for assessing OM information system success that was derived from both the DeLone and McLean I/S success model and a case study of the utilization of OMIS at a nuclear power plant. The second paper, "Can Mission