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"To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the concept of all of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters." --Churchman (1971).

Knowledge Management for the New World of Business
© Copyright, 1998, Yogesh Malhotra, Ph.D., @Brint.com, All Rights Reserved
Also See: Knowledge Management for E-Business Performance
Interview with CIO Magazine
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Abstract
Knowledge Management in Inquiring Organizations

A review of existing conceptualizations of information technology enabled knowledge management systems suggests that sparse attention has been given to the human aspects of knowledge creation. Given the increasingly 'wicked' environments, this dominant model of organizational knowledge management systems is increasingly constrained by its pre-programmed, convergent and consensus-oriented nature. It is suggested that systems that can provide multiple, and often conflicting, interpretations are better suited for wicked environments. We discuss how the human aspects of knowledge creation are critical for sustaining such systems for facilitating inquiry based on divergence of meanings and perspectives. Implications are drawn for improving the design of knowledge management systems that can facilitate organizational knowledge creation. The discussion of the human capabilities underlying organizational knowledge creation for wicked environments is expected to contribute to the bases for the future evaluation of organizational knowledge management systems.

This paper will be presented at the 3rd Americas Conference on Information Systems, its citation is given below.

Malhotra, Yogesh. "Knowledge Management in Inquiring Organizations," in the Proceedings of 3rd Americas Conference on Information Systems, Indianapolis, IN, August 14-17 (forthcoming).

Agreed that this paper is written for an academic audience... however, the implications for practitioners of organizational knowledge management are quite evident. The key 'issues' underscored by the paper are listed below within a practitioner context.

• Change is increasingly more radical, more rapid, and also of discontinuous nature... In other words, the future is increasingly more unpredictable... this relates to Brian Arthur's 'new world' of 're-everything'... One may alternatively think that the greatest organizational opportunities lie in 'creating' the discontinuities...
• Most of our information systems and control systems have been designed for a predictable world in which future strategies, goals, missions and tactics could be ascertained with predictability and then programmed into the 'dominant logic' of the organization. [One ponders... if the 'current' year 2000 problem is a reflection of this 'predictable' world assumption... despite the arguments about the resource constraints at the time when the assumption of a 2-digit date field was chosen as 'given.']
• However, a world that is less predictable and less certain overwhelms the predictive capacity of the organizational information systems and control systems that are designed for a predictable world... this world needs more and more of 'anticipation of surprise' as Steve Kerr would put it...
• How does one 'upgrade' the 'systems' of yesterday to a future that doesn't compute... One alternative as suggested in this paper is to focus on the synergy between the data and information processing capacity of the information technologies and the innovative and creative capacity of the human beings... In other words, understand 'what machines can do' as well as 'what they cannot do'... and overcome those limitations by unleashing the creative energy latent in those grey cells... How do we do so?... By 'de-controlling' human thinking... Relates to Kevin Kelly's 'Out of Control'... and 'Thriving on Edge of Chaos'... Uhh?
• One Last Word... Does all this sound like 'pie-in-the-sky' or too good to be true....? Well, there are 'real' companies and 'real' people who are already practising many aspects of what is mentioned above... you would find some of them mentioned in the cover stories of major magazines and newspapers... and many of them in-between-the-covers... of course when reading between the lines.
For a sample of companies and experts who seem to be getting more tuned to the notions of radical and accelerating change, you may like to peruse the following articles from a recent Information Week cover story section entitled Pace of Change.
• Beyond Business: What Experts Say About the 'Pace of Change' (Information Week, Cover Story, July 21, 1997) The idea-driven economy may be defying the grasp of traditional econometric models... Or are we developing technologies at a pace that is antithetical to meeting human needs... Does one narrow one's scope of attention to cope with change... Or, do you survive based on consistent and rigorous standards that are [somehow] anticipated to last over the decreasing half-life of ideas characterized by diminishing temporal predictability based on cause-effect rationality... and life on the edge-of-chaos.
• Pace of Change -- Faster Than The Speed Of Data (Information Week, Cover Story, July 21, 1997) Read how some major US companies are using new technologies to leverage the pace of change, while realizing the greater relevance of the human factor that keeps the show running... Increased emphasis is on keeping the momentum under intense pressure, being able to handle ambiguity, diminishing hierarchical controls, taking a more strategic view of internal employees as well as external vendors, and ensuring everyone involved understands the business reasons for change... Moral of the story: despite increasing sophistication of technology, agile players would need to rely on much greater sophistication of the humans who keep the wheels moving...