Accessing corporate memory in networked organisations

Competitive market forces and lower coordination costs are pushing large hierarchical organizations towards new organizational structures made of small, heterogeneous, project-oriented teams. These new organizations, however, lack the specialized knowledge created by functional units while working on several projects in the same area. Current collaborative technologies can help maintain communication between these groups and preserve organizational memory. We suggest another alternative for accessing this information which works by guiding users in their exploration of organizational records relevant to the problem at hand. In this model, hypothesis of information needs are formulated by monitoring the user´s manipulation of information in a decision support system, and an information retrieval engine is used to recall previous projects that match these needs. A prototype for guided exploration has been implemented on top of a collaborative design support tool which defines an explicit protocol for the capture of project information.<>