Knowledge active forgetting: The forgotten side of knowledge management

As Gregory Bateson, the British social scientists, once said “You can't live without an eraser”, the process of learning is not a unidirectional way toward accumulation of knowledge, rather, organizations should critically evaluate the value of their knowledge and if necessary, actively forget no-longer-useful knowledge. A brief review of related literature shows that the concept of knowledge active forgetting (KAF) is a crucial aspect of organizational learning and knowledge management. However, many aspects of this topic deserve more attention by researchers. The main gap in the literature seems to be related to the linkage between peculiar aspects of knowledge (such as stickiness, context dependency, and collective ontology) on one hand, and the antecedents, process and consequences of KAF, on the other. Through a critical review of the related literature, we came up with major propositions regarding the link between different types and features of knowledge and the process of active forgetting. The main contribution of this paper is showing that taking into account such peculiarities of knowledge (tacit vs. explicit, synthetic vs. analytical, general vs. specific) could pave the way of deep understanding the process of active forgetting in organizations.