Intellectual capital and necessity for documentation of achievements with oral history method

Faezeh Tavakoli [1]
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2018-4-17

Because of the limited capacity of the subconscious, humans are unable to maintain and remind all of the material extempore and completely. Moreover, the opinion of today's scholars suggests that, hereafter, every person should not regard his or her own personal information as a personal property, as a goodwill and capital of his career and work. Hence, documentation of methods, techniques and teachings of humans is a safe way of transferring individual and social experiences to others; insofar pioneer organizations are moving from the accumulation of individual knowledge of employees to the time of keeping knowledge for collective  benefit in order to improve business performance; Because in many cases, the systematic maintenance of valuable backgrounds and experiences and their correct transfer to individuals in a wide range of economic and industrial dimension can result in many benefits, such as reducing time, preventing repetition of previous and tests sometimes destructive times, preventing hardware and software costs to achieve  an experience or event. Research conducted on a large number of big companies and showed that seventy percent of them found experience as the most important factor in training managers of 21st century. It's no wonder that one of Hewlett-Packard's senior executives says: "If Hewlett-Packard knew what it was, its benefits would be triple." Documentation creates an organizational synergy; because of using gained experience by other people, increasing the set of experiences and learning from others' experiences, creating a common sense and vision, because of documentation and transfer of experience, facilitation for flow of information and experience due to being documented, creation of organizational transformation and increasing organizational productivity by paying attention to documentation and criteria related to performance, effectiveness and their implementation.

Unfortunately, unlike the success of the world's major organizations in managing this intangible capital, most Iranian organizations have not been successful in this regard because of their inability to implement knowledge management comprehensively. Still, a lot of costs are being wasted due to manage capital unsuccessfully, which results in a shorter life for capitals, and as a result, a loss in communities’ capital; they will involve in a deep economic deflation rather than abandon themselves. The experiences of financial managers are as a thought could be increased with documentation over time. Otherwise, these experiences will be disappear in the courses of events. Documentation of knowledge and experience of these people can be a guide for those who are coming into the organization, taking over the authority and covering the activities of the organization. In fact, by using documentation of experiences, people will understand what has been done in the past and what they have brought to the organization with tangible and intangible benefits.

On the other hand, documentation of experiences can also provide alternatives for decision making. That is, when managers are making strategic and operational decisions, should determine what decisions can be useful for the current situation in accordance with the environmental conditions and organizational goals, what, in accordance with the previous conditions. In such a situation, the role of managers' experience is very important in identifying environmental threats and opportunities, as well as finding ways to make changes appropriated to situation. In other words, managers' experiences are the best way to learn about how to deal with threats and environmental opportunities.

This documentation has a great importance in knowledge management. Knowledge management is a strategic and systematic approach to value the knowledge of an organization and as a concept that information changed into an applied one and made available in the proper form for those who need it and use it to solve the problem. If a knowledge and experience is identified, but it is not saved in organizational memory, it will be used once as a best usage of the knowledge and experience. If a knowledge saved in organizational memory, it will be kept in the organization forever, and staffs can refer to it and learn and develop it whenever they need. Saving directional knowledge can be done in different way such as written documentation as an oral history book for recording major and related events and cases.

The important step in documentation is compilation of oral history book causes a facilitation in distributing and applying the knowledge for organizational activities and actions in the feature. Organizations, as usual, cannot remember the reasons of works what they did in the past. One of the main purpose oral history book is to help staffs, experts, specialists and particularly managers of organizations of countries to realize the nature and value of organizational knowledge hidden in the aspects of experiences, and to record and document these experiences. Oral history is used by researchers as one of the most important means of collecting, preserving and maintaining knowledge. It is a tool to use of individual and group experiences for organizational development. Oral history describes and identifies events, historical events, based on the views, testimonies and practices of witnesses, observers and activists of the events. In fact, oral history records some of the experiences of the managers of this country (Iran), which has been earned by many material and spiritual costs. It can be said that documentation of experiences in the form of oral history book causes the subjective knowledge of individuals who are in the behavior and understanding of man and emanates from the interaction of individuals, to be changed as an explicit knowledge which is a documented and public one, and community will achieve new knowledge by sharing experiences and explicit knowledge.

By writing an oral history book, companies are reminded that the experiences of financial managers are as a thought could be increased with documentation over time. Otherwise, these experiences will be disappear in the courses of events. In other words, managers and organizations can be helped to achieve their strategic and strategic goals by documentation of the sum of all the experience gained in different situations. Therefore, organizations must consider what they know (intellectual capital) more than they have (material capital).

[1] The author of Methodology and Theoretical Issues of Oral History