Revitalizing Organizational Memory through Hermeneutic Phenomenology: Interpreting Information System Change in Ontario’s Child Protection Sector

After a period of robust activity in the 1990s and early 2000s, organizational memory has become a marginal topic in the study of information systems. To revitalize this debate, this paper looks at organizational memory from a phenomenological perspective. Traditional approaches to organizational memory have relied on knowledge-focused cognitivist assumptions. In this paper, an additional form of organizational memory is proposed that is embodied in the referential holism of equipment, environment, and socialization, which underpin being-in-the-world. This kind of organizational memory is not already obvious, but is hidden in plain sight. Three examples from the implementation of a new centralized enterprise case management system in the Canadian province of Ontario illustrate this understanding. This paper contributes both a more nuanced account of the phenomenon of organizational memory, as well as a phenomenological hermeneutic method to enable the study of this non-obvious background memory that underpins meaningful action in the world