Purpose

The aim of this paper is to develop a theory of organizational forgetting in the context of local governments from the paradigmatic lens of existing research orchestrated in management literature. The paper empirically explores how and why local governments forget and discusses the role of local politics in promoting memory loss in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors do an ethnographic study in a Village Panchayat, the lowest tier of the local government in rural India, in West Bengal, a state in eastern India. Data are collected through participant observation and informal interviews.

Findings

The paper argues that the existing framework on modes of organizational forgetting developed in the management literature is not sufficient in understanding the types of knowledge loss that occur in local governments. It shows that as a consequence of “memory decay” and “failure to capture,” local governments involuntary lose past knowledge and critical sources of expertise. The study also acknowledges the role of politics in deliberately endorsing organizational forgetting in local governments to eliminate failure and ethical lapses of elected representatives.

Originality/value

By exploring the phenomenon of organizational forgetting in local governments in the context of grassroots politics, this paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of organizational forgetting in a hitherto understudied area of how, and under what circumstances, public organizations such as local governments undergo forgetting, unlearning or loss of knowledge.

中文翻译：

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地方政府的组织遗忘：来自印度农村的一项研究

目的

本文的目的是从管理文献中编排的现有研究的范式视角，在地方政府的背景下发展一种组织遗忘理论。本文实证探讨了地方政府如何以及为何忘记并讨论了地方政治在促进组织记忆丧失方面的作用。

设计/方法/方法

作者在印度东部西孟加拉邦的印度农村地方政府的最低层村 Panchayat 进行了民族志研究。数据是通过参与观察和非正式访谈收集的。

发现

本文认为，现有的管理文献中关于组织遗忘模式的框架不足以理解地方政府发生的知识损失类型。它表明，由于“记忆衰退”和“未能捕获”，地方政府会不自觉地失去过去的知识和专业知识的关键来源。The study also acknowledges the role of politics in deliberately endorsing organizational forgetting in local governments to eliminate failure and ethical lapses of elected representatives.

原创性/价值

通过探索基层政治背景下地方政府的组织遗忘现象，本文有助于在迄今为止尚未充分研究的领域中对组织遗忘的持续讨论，即地方政府等公共组织如何以及在何种情况下经历遗忘、遗忘。或知识的损失。