The editors of the MIT Sloan Management Review are once again pleased to announce the winners of this year's Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize, awarded to the authors of the most outstanding SMR article on planned change and organizational development published from Fall 2003 through Summer 2004 (Volume 45).

Summer 2005, Vol. 46, No. 4, p. 25

The Winners:

Pablo Martin de Holan
Professor, Instituto de Empresa, Madrid, Spain

Nelson Phillips
Professor, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Thomas B. Lawrence
Professor, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

Authors of:
Managing Organizational Forgetting

This year's winning article is based upon the intriguing premise that, although companies often focus on creating organizational processes and structures that allow them to learn quickly, an organization's effectiveness is equally determined by what it chooses to remember, to unlearn or not to learn in the first place. In other words, real learning and real growth require a selective, discriminating and active approach to acquiring and utilizing knowledge.The authors offer a framework that categorizes forgetting along two dimensions. The first differentiates between accidental and intentional forgetting. The former is most often associated with the loss of valuable knowledge, which thus reduces a company's competitiveness. Intentional forgetting, on the other hand, can benefit an organization by helping to rid it of knowledge that has been producing dysfunctional outcomes. The second dimension highlights the difference between knowledge that is entrenched and knowledge that is new to the organization. When juxtaposed, the two dimensions suggest four types of organizational forgetting: memory decay, failure to capture, unlearning and avoiding bad habits. Each form is associated with a distinct set of processes and contexts that result in a specific set of challenges and therefore must be managed differently.

The panel of judges found the idea of organizational forgetting to be amuch needed concept to add to the study of organizational learning: "The paper does a wonderful job of laying out how systems increase their overall effectiveness by figuring out what they must remember, by monitoring what they forget to insure that valuable knowledge and skill is not forgotten, and by setting up learning mechanisms to acquire knowledge and skills that they will need to adapt to ever changing environmental circumstances. The authors have many suggestions for how to enhance the whole knowledge acquisition and retention process as organizations cope."

This year's panel of judges included three distinguished members of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty: Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus Edgar H. Schein, Society of Sloan Fellows Professor Eleanor D.Westney and Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management JoAnne Yates.

Richard Beckhard One of the founders and architects of the field of organizational development, Prof. Richard Beckhard was a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty for more than 20 years. A longtime friend of the MIT Sloan Management Review, Beckhard was known for his efforts to help organizations function in a more humane and high-performing manner and to empower people to be agents of change. His books include Organizational Development Strategies and Models, Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change, Changing the Essence: The Art of Creating and Leading Fundamental Change in Organizations, and his autobiography, Agent of Change: My Life, My Practice. The prize was established in 1984 by the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Business upon Prof. Beckhard's retirement and renamed the Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize after his death on December 28, 1999.

 

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