پیوند ارتباط فراموشی محفوظات با نوآوری از طریق فناوری و حافظه سازمانی Linking Unlearning with Innovation through Organizational Memory and Technology

An environment’s discontinuities are difficult for firms to manage because they demand different product architectures, they change the economics of the industry, destroy existing firm competences, create new value networks in which to compete and require technology investments with highly uncertain outcomes (Christensen and Rosenbloom, 1995). In this context, innovation is increasingly considered to be one of the key drivers of the long-term success of a firm in today’s competitive markets. The reason is that companies with the capacity to innovate will be able to respond to environmental challenges faster and better than non-innovative companies (Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 1998). Innovation has been conceptualised in a variety of ways in the literature, depending on the perspective from which it has been studied. It has been considered as a process; a result of both and different types of innovation have been distinguished. According to Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan (1998), innovation could be understood as the adoption of a new idea or behaviour in an organization. Literature classifies innovation between technical and administrative innovations. Whereas technical innovations include new technologies, products and services, administrative ones refer to new procedures, policies and organizational forms (Dewar and Dutton, 1986). Similarly, organizational innovativeness characterizes an organization by being supportive and permeable to innovation in terms of developing new products or processes, opening new markets, or simply developing a new strategic direction (Wang and Ahmed, 2004). As we have discussed above, organizational memory and technology infrastructure use different retention structures. On the one hand, the most obvious structures for encoding technologies include information systems such as corporate manuals, databases, filing systems, etc (Cross and Baird, 2000). These systems are continually being updated and analysed and are thus capable of generating new streams of information, thereby expanding knowledge (Zuboff, 1988). On the other hand, Walsh and Ungson (1991) suggest that organizational memory is ‘represented’ by many diverse aspects of an organization, for example: the organization’s culture, transformations (production processes and work procedures), structure (formal organizational roles), ecology (physical work settings) and information archives (both internal and external to the organization). It is obvious that all information stored in the organizational memory or the technology infrastructure does not stay there permanently. In this regard, researchers have taken several approaches to unlearning or forgetting (Akgün et al., 2007). On one hand, in situations where organizations and their members face changing environments it is necessary that the old ‘knowledge’ represented in the organizational memory be challenged prior to the addition of new knowledge (Akgün et al., 2007). This idea is recognized by Huber (1996), who suggested that the basic requirement for real learning consists of abandoning manners, experience, knowledge and beliefs that are vivid and were once useful, but are not valuable in the present. On the other hand, technology infrastructure can quickly become outdated as technology, personnel and business lines change, so regularly scheduled plan maintenance and regular testing are essential to ensure team leaders are familiar with the new technology and how it relates to the company’s overall business (Gold et al., 2001). The above considerations lead us to argue that for a given organization, both the organizational memory and the technology infrastructure, needs to be critically examined since it may no longer be relevant. The unlearning context, at its heart, attempts to reorientate organizational values, norms and/or behaviours by changing cognitive structures (Nystrom and Starbuck, 1984), mental models  (Day and Nedungadi, 1994), dominant logics (Bettis and Prahalad, 1995), and core assumptions which guide behaviour (Shaw and Perkins, 1991). If this is so, the context where unlearning can take place could be considered the genesis of a competitive advantage (Sinkula et al., 1997). According to Bogenrieder (2002), managers need to foster an unlearning context which opens the way for new habits, patterns, ways of doing and interpreting things to take place. To this end, Sinkula et al. (1997) propose that open-mindedness (i.e., a willingness to consider ideas and opinions that are new or different) is associated with the context of unlearning, through which the management supports the proactive questions of existing organizational routines, assumptions and beliefs potentially leading to being ignored, modified, deleted or replaced. Following Cegarra and Sanchez’s (2008) suggestions, we identify the following three interaction processes that characterize an unlearning framework: ƒ The examination of lens fitting, which refers to an interruption of the employees’ habitual, comfortable state of being, and it is through such framework that individuals of an organization will have access to new perceptions. ƒ The framework for changing the individual habits, which refers to the challenge of inhibiting wrong habits when an individual has not only understood the new idea, but is quite motivated to make the change. ƒ The framework for consolidating the emergent understandings, which refers to the organizational process that can free employees up to apply their talents by implementing new mental models based on adaptation to new knowledge structures. Thus, we propose H1 and H2 based on the importance of unlearning old knowledge as a prior step to the utilisation of organizational memory and the technology infrastructure and of the negative consequences of yielding to inertial forces (Akgün et al., 2007). From this perspective, the unlearning process can be seen as the abandonment of practices that were dominant but are now standing in the way of new learning and therefore of organizational competitiveness. Therefore: H1: Unlearning process → Technology infrastructure H2: Unlearning process → Organizational memory As noted above, an unlearning context fosters an interruption of the employees’ habitual, comfortable state of being (e.g. identifying problems, initiating projects or introducing novelties). A sudden change in those habits forces individuals to reconsider their old basic attitudes toward customers, competitors, suppliers, etc. However, at this stage updated-knowledge (e.g. new meanings) is individual rather than social, and tacit rather than explicit. This knowledge then needs to be embedded through the organizational memory and the technology infrastructure in order to become a dominant design, otherwise innovation processes will not take place (Akgün et al., 2007). In this aim, new knowledge may be further ‘consolidated’ through the emergent understandings that are created by group members when they interact (Schein, 1992), or by new technological tools that may offer a better way to deliver information (Cross and Baird, 2000). Considering this, we argue that unlearning may have an indirect effect on innovation processes by providing support through the use of new technologies and by changing the ways individuals interact or come to interpret things. Regarding this, organizational memory and technology infrastructure have often been presented as constructs with beneficial effects on innovation processes of an organization. For example, scholars have argued that by routinizing search activities in the form of standard operating procedures, individuals can learn to become more efficient at performing them (Walsh and Dewar, 1987). Organizational memory and technology infrastructure can also provide support to individuals by retaining a broader range of potential responses, thus providing more options for organizational decision makers when they respond to the variety presented to them by changes in the organizational environment. March has asserted that ‘for most purposes, good memories make good choices’ (۱۹۷۲). Since much of the organization’s innovation is created as a consequence of the utilization of the organizational memory and the technology infrastructure interaction, it is likely to be no longer relevant due to outdated assumptions about the use of technologies. Therefore: H3: Technology infrastructure → Innovativeness H4: Organizational memory → innovativeness