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When a team faces a familiar problem, a shared framework can bring earlier lessons into today’s decisions. It acts as institutional memory when it helps people retrieve and apply what the organization has learned—but it is only one part of that memory, and it should not be followed blindly.
What is institutional memory?
Institutional memory is the knowledge an organization retains and can draw on later. It is broader than an archive or database: it includes documented information, people’s experience, shared routines, and the processes by which knowledge is acquired, kept, and retrieved. Walsh and Ungson described these processes in their 1991 analysis of organizational memory (Walsh and Ungson, 1991).
A framework can contribute to that memory by giving people shared concepts, decision criteria, and repeatable practices. It makes some accumulated experience easier to carry across decisions and, potentially, across employees. But a framework is not memory in its entirety: important context may remain in people’s judgment or in routines that are difficult to fully document.
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How do frameworks preserve and transfer knowledge?
A useful framework does more than store instructions. It helps people recognize a situation, retrieve relevant prior learning, and coordinate what to do next. That can make knowledge less dependent on the person who first acquired it, provided others can understand and use the guidance.
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Knowledge management also requires more than capture. Argote, McEvily, and Reagans’ 2003 framework distinguishes three outcomes: knowledge creation, retention, and transfer. The conditions that support them depend on the organizational unit, relationships among units, and the nature of the knowledge (Argote, McEvily, and Reagans, 2003). A written framework may support retention, for example, but it does not automatically create new insight or ensure that another team can apply what it records.
- Creation: people develop new knowledge through experience, problem-solving, and interaction.
- Retention: the organization keeps useful learning in records, people, routines, or structures.
- Transfer: that learning reaches the people or teams who need it and can be interpreted in their context.
Why do teams repeat processes—and when does that help?
Teams repeat processes because routines make coordinated work more reliable and faster. Cohen and Bacdayan define organizational routines as “multi-actor, interlocking, reciprocally-triggered sequences of actions,” and describe them as a major source of reliability and speed (Cohen and Bacdayan, 1994). A framework can help make those routines visible and teachable.
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The same repetition can become a liability if people apply a familiar routine automatically to a situation it does not fit. A process that worked under earlier conditions may produce poor results after the problem, constraints, or environment has changed. The framework should therefore guide judgment, not replace it.
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Some knowledge is difficult to codify: situational judgment, intuition, and expertise built through practice. Anand, Manz, and Glick argue that information technology should be complemented by organization-level processes and attention to this softer knowledge (Anand, Manz, and Glick, 2002). A framework may help colleagues share and discuss such expertise, but it cannot be assumed to contain all the context a skilled person uses.
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That is why documentation works best alongside opportunities to ask questions, learn from experienced colleagues, and discuss why a practice exists. If people can see only the steps but not the reasoning or conditions behind them, they may follow the procedure without knowing when it needs adaptation.
How organizational history shapes a framework
Frameworks carry traces of the circumstances in which an organization developed its structures, routines, and culture. Marquis and Qiao’s 2024 account distinguishes brief “junctures,” when these features form and gain lasting influence, from longer periods in which past influence may strengthen, remain in place, or weaken (Marquis and Qiao, 2024). A framework can preserve valuable learning from such history, but it can also preserve assumptions that no longer fit.
This makes revision part of institutional memory, not a rejection of it. An organization needs to retain what it learned while remaining able to distinguish durable lessons from practices that were useful only in a particular setting.
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- Record the reasoning, not just the steps. State the problem the framework addresses, the assumptions it relies on, and the circumstances in which it is intended to apply.
- Make ownership and retrieval clear. People need to know where the current guidance lives, who maintains it, and how to find relevant material when making a decision.
- Pair documentation with human transfer. Use discussion, mentoring, or review of past decisions to convey context that a written procedure cannot fully capture.
- Review outcomes and fit. Check whether the framework still supports the intended result as conditions change; revise or retire steps that have become unsuitable.
- Keep a route for exceptions and feedback. Let users explain when guidance does not fit and feed that experience into future updates, rather than treating every deviation as a failure.
For a sector-specific account of institutional-memory practices, the National Academies Press published Preserving and Using Institutional Memory Through Knowledge Management Practices in 2007. It examines transportation agencies in the United States and Canada, so its scope is that sector rather than every kind of organization.
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