Chapter 2: A strategic management of forgetting

Gilles Lambert ()
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Gilles Lambert: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Even if it is impossible to forget Ehud Zuscovitch for those who had near relations with him, I am sure that he agreed with the above mentioned idea which was discussed with him now two decades ago: the necessity to forget. Evidently, we do not mean forgetting as an abyssal slip of memory of organizations but as an assumed effort of destruction-creation , a beloved concept to the indefatigable and obsessional researcher that Ehud was. Considering forgetting as a strategic fad of management is equivalent to accepting a position of researcher made of doubt and humility more than monolithic certainty considering that the vocation of Science is the search for the truth. This was the strength of Ehud, as it was also true for the researcher he came across in Strasbourg in 1992 during his long quest, J.G. March. Interviewed on the reasons for choosing such a ‘harebrained' image for the Garbage Can model of decision, March justifi ed this choice in the following terms: I think one should be very serious about his work but not serious about himself and so serious about your ideas that you spend the rest of your life defending them. And one of the ways of protecting yourself against that is to give silly labels to the ideas so that you don't glorify them beyond what they are … This was a way of giving it a label that made it susceptible to abandonment.

Date: 2013-02-01
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Published in Thierry Burger-Helmchen. The Economics of Creativity : Ideas, Firms and Markets, Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 21 p., 2013, 9781138901278

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