de Holan & Phillips (2004)

Citation: de Holan, P. M., & Phillips, N. (2004). “Remembrance of Things Past? The Dynamics of Organizational Forgetting.” Management Science.

de Holan and Phillips (2004) analyze how organizations lose knowledge over time, a phenomenon they call organizational forgetting. Their key contribution is to show that forgetting is not a single process but a set of distinct dynamics, some harmful and some potentially beneficial.

They identify two dimensions of forgetting:

1) Intentional vs. Unintentional:

• Intentional forgetting occurs when organizations deliberately discard outdated routines or knowledge. This can be beneficial when old practices no longer fit the environment.
• Unintentional forgetting occurs when knowledge is lost by accident, such as through employee turnover or neglect.

2) Loss vs. Failure to Capture:

• Loss refers to knowledge that once existed but decays or disappears.
• Failure to capture refers to knowledge that is never codified or stored in the first place.

Combining these dimensions yields four types of forgetting:

• Accidental loss: Valuable knowledge disappears unintentionally (e.g., a key employee leaves). This is harmful and common.
• Intentional unlearning: Outdated knowledge is deliberately discarded (e.g., abandoning a legacy process). This can be positive.
• Memory decay: Knowledge fades because it is not used or reinforced (e.g., rarely executed procedures). This can be harmful or neutral.
• Failure to capture: Useful knowledge is never recorded (e.g., tacit judgment that remains in someone’s head). This is often hidden but important.

The authors emphasize that organizations often focus on “loss” and neglect “failure to capture,” even though the latter can be the more serious bottleneck. In many organizations, the most valuable knowledge never makes it into systems or documentation.

They also highlight that forgetting is dynamic. It interacts with organizational learning: in some cases, forgetting is necessary for new learning to occur. An organization that clings to outdated routines can become rigid and less adaptive. Thus, the challenge is not to eliminate forgetting but to manage it—preserving valuable knowledge while shedding obsolete practices.

The paper’s framework provides a diagnostic tool for understanding knowledge failures. Managers can ask:

• Are we losing knowledge we once had?
• Are we failing to capture knowledge we should have?
• Is forgetting intentional or accidental?

These distinctions matter because the remedies differ. Preventing accidental loss might require retention policies, documentation, or mentoring. Reducing failure to capture might require better processes for surfacing tacit knowledge. Managing intentional unlearning requires cultural and leadership support to abandon outdated routines.

Organizational forgetting is not one thing. Unintentional loss and failure to capture erode performance, but intentional unlearning can be necessary. The contribution is to replace “knowledge loss” as a vague complaint with specific mechanisms that have distinct remedies.