The dissertation is devoted to the topical issue of formation, safeguarding and developing the institutional memory in public administration, since observed high employee turnover rate among public administration bodies, the problem of institutional amnesia, together with the need for efficient provision of continuous knowledge and sharing expert skills with young professionals, require a comprehensive strategy of facilitating the ways to enhance its performance.
The paper applies the term “institutional memory” to public administration bodies and focuses on the research of its scientific study, drawing the analogy between “organizational memory” and “corporate memory”, since the mechanisms underlying its formation are identical in this case. The term “institutional memory of the public administration bodies”, featured in the paper, should be referred to as the ability of the public administration bodies to collect, develop, sustain, update, transfer, store and apply professional tangible and intangible knowledge, that is based on the experience, traditions and corporate culture of the public administration institutions. This knowledge, when taken with creative reconstruction of the past, serves as an important factor contributing to effective managerial decision-making and future planning.
The evolution of the scientists’ views on the issues of the research was analyzed it resulted in identifying five conditional actual periods of researching the issue of the organizations’ memory. The author presents a detailed analysis of the most popular theories, including the “knowledge repositories” model, a modular concept of organizational memory construction including knowledge management processes, as well as the model based on a variety of memory types. The research showed that existing models are either too abstract or too particular; therefore, they do not display the transition of knowledge in a broad sense, neglect the role of IT, do not integrate the existing barriers of knowledge and do not have instructions for using the appropriate model. The peculiarities of the phenomenon of institutional amnesia in public administration are revealed, the main reasons for its loss are determined. The concept of the social dilemma of knowledge exchange between civil servants is studied; the barriers that complicate this process and the factors that influence the behavior of social cooperation are identified. The peculiarities of foreign experience in the formation and development of institutional memory in public authorities, new directions and management technologies to ensure its functioning and preservation are analyzed.
Knowledge formation and its sustainability in Ukrainian public administration bodies is underpinned by building a national functional-structural model of institutional memory which includes both bearers of intangible knowledge, as well as domains for storing formalized organizational knowledge (knowledge databases and source catalogues); seven operational procedures involved in knowledge management: identification, transferring, formalization, storage, updating, generating and implementation of knowledge; supporting objects; tools for formation, development and storing institutional memory.
The suggested nine tools on enhancing the process of sustaining institutional memory (knowledge management system, nurturing corporate culture, mentorship, corporate learning, internship, corporate story-telling, e-government G2E module, crowd-sourcing, off-boarding, state secretaries institute), supported with the methodology of their implementation.
