Gray Southon asked: "... what contribution ... academics can best make to
the field [of knowledge management]."
I only have time for a general response now. That general advice is this:
Focus on the dynamics of knowledge management. That is, focus not on
cataloguing, describing, and defining -- painting static pictures -- which
seems to be the favorite occupation of academics in any discipline. Focus
on figuring out how knowledge can best be created, preserved for use, and
made useable -- the dynamics of how knowledge is made available and
actually used.
Herbert Simon wrote years ago that scientists have a choice of two kinds
of descriptions of the world they study: state descriptions and process
descriptions. As an example he said (or maybe it's my example) look at a
birthday cake. The state description would include things like its color,
the amount of icing, how it's decorated, its size and weight, etc. The
process description would be the recipe for making it.
I contend that what we need most in knowledge management is "recipes." [I
don't mean that everything is reducible to step-by-step instructions, I'm
just using the language of the example. I mean we need process, or
dynamic, descriptions.] And I will be shocked if academics produce them,
because to produce dynamic descriptions one must intervene in a process
and study the results of intervention -- one cannot just look down from on
high. Dynamics is a messy business that requires one to get one's hands
dirty. And that's what I believe we most need.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>