Maintaining Interpersonal Continuity in Groups: The Role of Collective Memory Processes in Redistributing Information

Maintaining interpersonal continuity of experience is a process by which groups ensure that new information is available to members who require it. Groups and organizations continuously encounter new information. Sometimes this information is encountered by a single member (or subset of the group), who may have to redistribute it to other members for it to be useful to the group as a whole. Redistribution is conceptualized as a collaborative activity where members recall past episodes during group discussion, thereby creating shared knowledge. Discourse data from an observational study of groups managing a simulation show that redistribution takes place mainly at the outset of meetings. Members with different perspectives on new information participate differently in the redistribution process. Outgoing members (the possessors of new information) initiate a majority of references to the preceding meeting, and contribute the most memories. Incoming (previously inactive) members also participate in redistribution by focusing recall and contributing information of their own from earlier meetings. Redistribution is a dynamic process that evolves in the course of interaction.