Collective memory support and cognitive-conflict group decision-making: an experimental investigation

Collective memory is an active research area and researchers have focused on several social psychological perspectives of collective memory. A form of collective memory is organizational memory that has emerged as a topic of considerable importance in recent years. Significant work has been appearing about how information technology can enable and support organizational memory systems to be developed that, in turn, facilitate organizational learning. However, much of the existing work on this area is conceptual or theoretical with very little empirical examination. In this research we discuss how a hypermedia-based prototype of collective memory was used in a controlled experiment to investigate empirical validity of the consequential effects of using memory support on cognitive-conflict type of decisions. The results indicate that the use of collective memory information provides the study participants focused attention on the cognitive-conflict task domain and leads to faster decision-making. The results also indicate that there may be a potential for collective memory support to lead to encased learning. However, the results do not manifest any effect of collective memory on the perceived decision quality. Implications for research and practice and directions for future research are discussed. A revised, more robust but also more complex model derived from the results of the study is proposed for future research and validation.