TOOMS: in pursuit of designing an organizational memory system for category managers

Capturing, encoding, storing and retrieving relevant historical knowledge and data for use in decision situations is a difficult problem. This project contributes to the understanding of organizational memory information systems through the development of a conceptual model for a task-oriented organizational memory system. In particular, this study builds on the notion of addressing organizational memory "in the small" by developing an information system that actualizes organizational memory for a specific task. A laboratory experiment was conducted to test the effects of knowledge type, task complexity and presentation mode on the actual and perceived effectiveness of completing a defined task. Results from the study indicate decision makers can benefit from a task-oriented organizational memory system.