Si l'apprentissage organisationnel est un thème central des théories de l'organisation, l'oubli organisationnel a été beaucoup moins étudié. Dans un environnement en mutation, les risques d'obsolescence des savoirs et des capacités retiennent prioritairement l'attention des entreprises et des chercheurs. Cette thèse entend montrer que de nombreuses transformations contemporaines des entreprises (de leur organisation comme de leurs ressources) invitent à reconsidérer les risques associés à la continuité de leurs capacités d'action. Dans le cadre d'une recherche menée en collaboration avec un centre d'ingénierie spécialisé dans la réalisation de grands projets industriels complexes, nous avons montré que des difficultés opérationnelles liées à un contexte de forte croissance de la charge de travail et des effectifs révélaient en fait un problème plus profond. Une longue période d'absence de projets et un profond renouvellement générationnel des équipes d'ingénieurs avaient en effet rendu nécessaire une phase de réapprentissage collectif. Mais les travaux de recherche existants sur l'oubli organisationnel ne permettent que très partiellement de penser et gérer ce type de situation. À travers notre cas d'étude, nous montrons que dans une activité d'ingénierie, le diagnostic de l'oubli organisationnel doit moins reposer sur une analyse de la performance que sur une attention aux signaux envoyés par les ressources humaines ainsi qu'aux temps et aux modes de constitution des capacités d'action. Ce changement de posture nous permet, dans un premier temps de qualifier une situation de « mur d'apprentissage » comme paroxystique des phases de réapprentissage. Nous mettons ensuite en évidence le caractère pluriel et hétérogène des sources de l'oubli organisationnel, qui complique les opérations de diagnostic et d'orientation de l'action. Nous nous efforçons enfin d'appréhender les conditions macro- et micro-organisationnelles qui permettent de franchir ce « mur ». / Although organizational learning is a central topic in organization theory, organizational forgetting has been much less studied. In a changing environment, researchers and practicioners have primarly focused on the risk of knowledge and skills obsolescence. This thesis starts from the idea that the transformations undergone by many companies make it necessary to tackle the risks related to the maintenance of their capabilities. As part of a collaborative research with an engineering department in charge of steering large and complex industrial projects, we have shown that operational difficulties, in a context of rapid growth of workload and staff, revealed a deeper problem. Indeed, a deep generational renewal of teams along with a long period without new projects, generated a need for a collective relearning process. However, existing research on organizational forgetting is silent on how to think and manage this kind of situations. Through our case study, we show that, in engineering environments, diagnosing organizational forgetting requires paying attention to human signals and to capability building processes and length. First, it enables us to describe a situation of "learning wall" as a paroxysmal phase of relearning. We then highlight the plural and heterogeneous sources of organizational forgetting, which complicate diagnosis and action. Finally, we strive to identify the macro- and micro- organizational conditions that bridge this learning wall.

Att hantera kunskapen inom organisationer blir allt viktigare för att kunna förbättra organisatoriska utvecklingsmöjligheter och den konkurrenskraft som följer av detta. För en organisation med hög personalomsättning är således kunskapshanteringen av största vikt. Misslyckas organisationen att föra över kunskap och motverka de kunskapsglapp som kan uppkomma när individer lämnar organisationen är risken att förlora avgörande kunskapsresurser överhängande. Uppsalas studentnationer utgör ett tydligt exempel på organisationer som brottas med den här problematiken. Studentnationernas ledning byts ut betydligt oftare än vad som är vanligt i näringslivet och problematiken kring kunskapsöverföring vid hög personalomsättning dras på så vis till sin spets.   Syftet med denna uppsats var att skapa förståelse för kuratorer på Uppsalas studentnationers upplevelse av kunskapsöverföring i samband med kuratorsskiften. Det är således de enskilda kuratorernas upplevelse av kunskapsöverföring som är i fokus för uppsatsen. Studien genomfördes i form av en kvalitativ intervjustudie bestående av åtta stycken semistrukturerade intervjuer med sittande eller nyligen avgångna kuratorer vi Uppsalas studentnationer.   De resultat som går att utläsa av studien är i mångt och mycket konsekvent med teoribildning på området. Det framgick att respondenterna upplevde tydlig dokumentation och rutiner som en av grundpelarna för att kunskapsöverföringen ska lyckas. Resultatet tyder även på att den utbrändhet många av kuratorerna upplever i slutet av sitt kuratorsår utgör ett stort hot mot effektiv kunskapsöverföring i samband med kuratorsskiften. / Knowledge management is becoming progressively more and more important in order to improve and organization’s possibilities for improvement and the competitive advantage that follows. To an organization with high turnover rate, knowledge management is of outmost importance. If an organization fails to transfer the relevant knowledge when an individual leaves, the risk of vital knowledge loss increases dramatically.   The student nations of Uppsala are clear examples of organizations with a high rate of turnover where these complexes of problem occur. The top management is exchanged considerably more often than in the business world and thus the issue of knowledge transfer is very relevant.   The purpose of this essay was to create an understanding of the experience of knowledge transfer of the Curators at Uppsala’s student nation. It is their subjective experiences we are focusing on in this essay. The study was conducted in the form of qualitative interviews consisting of eight semi-structured interviews with current of recent Curators at the student nations in Uppsala.   Our results from this study are consistent with the theory in this field. We could see how the respondents experience clear documentation and routines as important basis for knowledge transfer to succeed. The result also indicates that the exhaustion that many of the Curators experience at the end of their contracted year is a major threat against effective knowledge transfer when exchanging Curators.

Studies have shown that there are several advantages to armed forces in having a well-developed learning organization. Scholars mainly argue two things on the subject, firstly, the military organization with the stronger organizational learning capability will win contemporary wars and conflicts. Secondly, the academic interest on the subject have been small and thus studies on military learning organizations are lacking in numbers.   The organizational learning capability of the Swedish naval forces might be built in peacetime, but by testing theories on organizational learning in combat we might get a chance to see how it could or could not hold up in a wartime setting. With a theory consuming research design the purpose of this study is to use Frank Hoffman and Meir Finkel’s theoretical frameworks to investigate the Swedish naval forces more closely.   The result of the analysis shows that the Swedish naval forces have a strong ability to engage lower level learning which leads to adaptation. The analysis also shows that the ability to engage higher level learning in combat situations are lacking. Adaptation without an ability for organizational learning have shown to almost always lead to organizational forgetting, the price of which historically have shown to be dire both economically and in human lives.