Abstract:

In an age when information is abundantly available to everyone, it is no longer enough to possess knowledge. Individuals and companies have to act on it. It is not enough to accumulate knowledge in libraries or databases, but to create a knowledge-friendly environment for different groups of workers with different experiential levels, in technology focused jobs. Most important, it has to be considered the necessity to apply knowledge, by making better decisions, coordinating company operations, and advancing competitive strategies. With respect to the resource-based view of strategic management, one of the most important disadvantages that the Hellenic Railways face is the inevitable retirement of workers that had key positions in the company. Specifically, the new workers had to accumulate all the “tacit knowledge” they could, in only a few months, due to the fact that Hellenic Railways did not make any recruitment for a period of more than 20 years.
The present paper focuses on the efforts of creating a basic organizational memory in the Hellenic Railways Industry. Our main purpose is to create the spark for a basic knowledge organizational memory, and to treat the gap that was created because of the company’s negligence to recruit on time the key-staff. In this respect, a number of methods of knowledge exchange and knowledge “cultivation” were designed and applied across older and newer groups of workers for the time period of 9 months. Results show that, after the time period of 9 months, the overall productivity of the work groups was raised up to 250%, while the job commitment of the new workers was remarkably improved, creating the basis of an organizational memory system. Since then, knowledge management methods are highly appreciated in company (Thessaloníki workshop) and databases of both tacit and explicit knowledge factors are being “recorded”, “evaluated” and “reused” towards a knowledge creating environment.

Keywords:

organizational memory, knowledge management, organizational commitment.