Forgetting confidently: Determinants and consequences of trustful usage of information systems in organizations

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Continuously increasing and changing amounts of data in modern organizations demand new information handling strategies. Effective knowledge management requires a flexible selection of essential information, for example, for decision processes under uncertainty or in dynamic economic markets. In this regard, information systems can reduce decision maker’s cognitive load, emotional strain, and stress. However, for those positive effects to occur, persons need to use the information systems trustfully in order to forget “confidently”. The goal of the present research project is to model and empirically examine the psychological processes underlying trustful use of information systems, enabling intentional forgetting. Building on the basic intentional forgetting effect from cognitive psychology (e.g., Bjork, 1970), results of the first phase of this research project demonstrated that directed forgetting (a variation of intentional forgetting) of memory content can be found also in a simulated business context with complex decision making tasks. In this study, forgetting was not triggered by an explicit instruction (to forget) but rather implicitly by the availability of a management information system (MIS). In line with our expectations, participants’ trust in the MIS was an important precondition for the effects of directed forgetting to occur. In the proposed second phase of this research project, we want to replicate, extent, and transfer those promising findings into existing organizations. To this end, different versions of a new MIS will be implemented in collaborating companies. We want to validate the MIS in existing socio-technical systems using a field experiment with several measurement points in time (i.e., pre-post design), two different versions of the MIS (repeated measurement), and technical as well as psychological evaluation criteria (cognitive performance, perceived stress, etc.). Additionally, we want to examine our theoretical model developed in the first phase of this research project by investigating trust in the MIS as a precondition for directed forgetting using two large studies with working participants from different organizations. The first study captures specific user events “in situ”. Considering for future developments, the second study examines the influence of self-learning components on trust in the MIS and directed forgetting. Together, this research project follows a Full-Cycle approach, in which theory building and experimental testing is complemented by field studies.