Origins of the Author’s Interest

The author’s interest in organizational memory (OM) came about organically through several unconnected observations in the 1970s and 1980s when he worked for the Financial Times in London. The period spanned a decade of commercial activity in the United Kingdom that registered an event—seemingly more accidental than planned—that had a seminal effect on the country’s economic prospects. It happened when the majority of workers stopped being paid weekly in cash and bank accounts became the norm for the majority of citizens for the first time, a choice that had been commonplace for at least 40 years in the United States and which had been introduced in neighboring France by President Charles de Gaulle immediately after World War II. It marked the point when Britain belatedly changed itself from a cash economy into an investment economy. Unheralded, the effect was that individuals unconsciously changed their budgeting habits from a 7-day cycle to a 30-day cycle. Rather than having to plan for a week at a time, the extra cash at the beginning of each month meant that Britons had to think in ways that encompassed interest rates and financial planning. At a stroke, money that was traditionally kept in the back pocket was issued straight into the mainstream economy through bank accounts and other forms of investment, helping to fuel Mrs. Thatcher’s enterprise boom. It was a decision that could have been made much earlier by observing and adapting the experience of others. For this author, it was his first cognisant exposure to the potential power of experiential learning, albeit one that emanated from others’ experience and which happened much later in the country’s industrial history than competing nations. To him, the puzzling aspect of this late conversion was that the United Kingdom was the world’s oldest industrialized country, which should have given it a clear experiential advantage in the development stakes. Instead, it served as a disadvantage, turning the country into a very late player. The “why” generated many introspective discussions. The “how”—how to tackle the enigma—took much longer.