A CONCEPT OF CORPORATE MEMORY Howard

An organization often has much information which is not effectively utilized. We have begun to describe a concept of "corporate memory" which attempts to provide information systems support to the organization as a whole, rather than to a particular individual. We examine the propositions that organizations incur higher information gathering costs than individuals (due to the need for relearning things already known elsewhere in the organization) and higher lost opportunity costs (caused by not having information known in one part of the organization available to other parts) . The corporate memory system is a logical extension to the office automation concepts being widely discussed today. A proposed design and some examples of potential utility of corporate memory systems are presented.