The Continued Challenge of Y2K: What Can We Learn?

The Year 2000 (Y2K) brought numerous challenges as software and component technologies that did not properly recognize the date change threatened to fail, seriously interrupting normal business functions around the world. A campaign involving millions of IT professionals worldwide was launched to identify and correct faulty systems. Nations came together in an unprecedented spirit of cooperation, working against an immovable deadline to avoid disaster. After spending billions of dollars and countless hours of remediation work, corrections were made and the millennium date changed without incident. Y2K remediation was a declared a powerful example of success by Y2K team leaders throughout the world. This is an exploratory study that begins to examine the impact of Y2K remediation projects at the local level through a case study approach using narrative analysis. The results of the study suggests that models of learning theory, knowledge creation, complexity and action research/learning can be applied to understanding the Y2K phenomenon. Learning organization model implies organizational change