Representing organizational memory for computer-aided utilization

Organizational memory (OM) is the means by which knowledge from the past is brought to bear on present activities. For effective use of OM, it must be represented in a machineunderstandable form, so that man, machine, and OM can work in concert to perform business activities such as problem solving, decision making, workflow management, and organizational learning. To this end, we have developed a knowledge representation scheme that uses a trio of logic, ontology, and computation as knowledge representation constructs, Topic Maps in XML syntax (XTM) and related software tools as the representation technology, and three distinct but closely related ontologies (information, enterprise, and domain ontology) as the operationalized knowledge objects. Based on this knowledge representation scheme, we propose an OM architecture along with a feasible and practical methodology for representing OM to facilitate computer-aided utilization. The methodology has been applied to a laboratory experiment for a provider of knowledge-intensive services dubbed ‘Taiwan’s Dun & Bradstreet.’ A field interview indicates that top management endorses the OM architecture and developers confirm the feasibility of the methodology.