Psychology and Cognitive-Science Foundations of Institutional Alzheimer's™

Non-Medical Disclaimer This research note establishes the cognitive-science and organizational-memory foundation underlying Institutional Alzheimer's™ (HCCGSA-FRAMEWORK-005) and the Adaptive Dynamic Memory Intelligence Protocol — ADMIP™ (HCCGSA-FRAMEWORK-006). It demonstrates that the core claim — that organizations, like individuals, depend on a working memory process, and that hospitality businesses systematically fail at it — rests on established, peer-reviewed research in cognitive psychology and organizational behavior rather than on the Institutional Alzheimer's™ label alone. The note covers four areas: why institutional amnesia undersells the progressive nature of the failure; the cognitive-science foundation drawn from research on encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation; the organizational-memory foundation drawn from Walsh and Ungson (1991) and De Holan and Phillips (2004); and a direct mapping of the individual cognitive process to the five phases of ADMIP™ — Capture, Classify, Route, Dispatch, and Retain. It also introduces three operational gap categories — the Awareness Gap, the Memory Gap™, and the Retrieval Gap — and establishes service recovery as a second, distinct memory-producing event grounded in reconsolidation research. All citations have been independently verified as of September 2026. Two sources from an earlier draft that could not be located or confirmed were deliberately excluded.