Corporate Amnesia

Arnold Kransdorff

Arnold Kransdorff is an expert in knowledge management and the leading UK authority on the consequences of the flexible labor market. His unique speciality is the management of Organizational Memory (OM), the institution-specific know-how accrued from experience that characterises any organization's ability to perform and which walks out of the door every time an employee leaves.

The innovator of the business concept known as corporate amnesia, he is a former industrial commentator for the London Financial Times and the recipient of several national and international awards, among them Industrial Feature Writer of the Year (1981) and an Award of Excellence (1997) from Anbar Management Intelligence, the world's leading guide in management journal literature. A guest lecturer at several UK business schools and a regular speaker at international conferences and seminars, he is a member of the Association of Business Historians, the European Business History Association and the Business History Conference of the US. He has assisted in the RSA's Inquiry on Tomorrow's Company, the ESRC-commissioned study on Management Research, the CBI's deliberations on Flexible Labour Markets and the Washington, DC-based Corporate Leadership Council’s study on New Tools for Managing Workforce Stability. 

He runs London-based knowledge management group Pencorp that specialises in helping organizations better cope with imposed change and the stop-start consequences of a mobile workforce. The company, which was formed in 1984, are leaders in the use of oral debriefing techniques in management development, succession planning and post-implementation reviews, and the production of corporate histories.

With a wide historical knowledge of industry and a deep understanding of the strategic and tactical issues facing international business, he is a enthusiastic proponent of the principles of the Learning Organization, in particular experiential learning, post-project auditing, benchmarking and using corporate and business history as a management development tool. 

+ He is listed by Celebrity Speakers International in their Human Resources category and by the Association for Management Education & Development.

+ He spoke at the Paris Futuract conference in December 2000.

+ He presented a conference paper on the future of corporate and business history at the Open University Business School for the Association of Business Historians in March 2001.

Other reading material by Arnold Kransdorff

Corporate DNA Using Organizational Memory to Improve Poor Decision-Making

Gower Publishing - ISBN: 0 566 08681 6

Gower Publishing: more details

Knowledge Management: Begging for a Bigger Role

Business Expert Press: ISBN:  978 1 60649 020 4

(Business Expert: more details)

..... on Management Development

Business Horizons, May/June 1999, Swing Doors and Musical Chairs. *

Organization Development Journal, Vol 18, No 1, Spring 2000, Managing Organisational Memory ( OM ); The New Competitive Imperative. *

..... on Corporate Amnesia

World Review, Volume 3 Number 1, 1998. - "Corporate Amnesia ". +

Strategy, July 1998. - "Forgetting the lessons of corporate history ". * ..... on Succession Planning

Management Decision, Volume 34, Number 2, 1996 - "Succession planning in a fast-changing world" *

Management Development Review, Vol 8 Number 2, 1995 - "Exit interviews as an induction tool." *

Training Officer, March 1995 - "Succession planning." +

The Guardian (Management Page), October 12, 1996 - "Job losses and the Alzheimer effect" +

The European, September 19-25, 1997 - "History sacrificed on the alter of downsizing." +

The Observer, January 8, 1995 - "Lest we forget ....,." +

Accountancy, April, 1998 - "Succession planning in a fast-changing world." +

..... on Organisational Learning

Financial Times (Management Page), July 31, 1996 - "Keep know-how in the company". +

The Learning Organization, Volume 3, Number 1, 1996 - "Using the benefits of hindsight." *

Internal Auditing, August 1996 - "The Learning Audit." *

Managerial Auditing, Volume 11, Number 4, 1996 - "The role of post-project analysis." *

Workforce, September, 1997 - "Fight organizational memory relapse." +

Personnel Management, May, 1993 - "Making acquisitions work by the book." +

Accountancy Age, April, 1993 - "A history lesson". +

ProjectPro, Volume 7, No 5, September 1997 - "The benefits of hindsight." +

Knowledge Management, May 1999 - "You’ve not had 30 years’ experience, you’ve had one year’s experience 30 times."

Knowledge Management Review, Issue 9, July/August 1999 - "Learning to make work work." +

Liberating Knowledge Guide, CBI. October 1999 - "Knowledge Management’s role in experiential learning." +

..... on Empowerment

Financial Mail, March 7, 1997 - "Ironing our the learning curve." +

Boardroom, June 1997 - "Empowerment and affirmative action. Using role models of South African business to show the way." +

Management Today, April 1997 - "Using knowledge preservation to maintain the skills base." +

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