Malcolm Burson asked me to forward this private post to the list:
Yes, I do feel strongly about this. Right now, though, I can't think of
much better to do than to quote myself when I said that organizational
learning can exist in "structures, processes, and systems." The fact that
a "process" exists within an organization (e.g., that the way incoming
orders are handled is by first doing x, then y, then z, etc.) is not what
I call "knowledge." The DESCRIPTION of the process (words saying, in
effect, "First we do x, then we do y, then we do z, then ...") -- if it is
explicitly captured and "stored" somewhere in the organization -- would be
knowledge (to my mind.) But such words do not even have to exist in order
for an organization to be following a process; processes evolve over time
without being documented in such ways.
I guess I would choose not to call processes knowledge. Similarly I would
not describe as knowledge a skill, nor a habit, nor an attitude of an
individual person. And I believe organizations can have "attitudes"
(which, even in individuals, are inferences from behavior) and while I
wouldn't call these attitudes "knowledge" I would contend that attitudes
are learned.
More importantly, system dynamics has shown me that what may be most
important in understanding and changing how an organization acts (or what
its results will be) may be its structure -- the pattern of positive and
negative causal loops and how they are interconnected. If we capture this
structure in a causal loop diagram or, better, a stock-and-flow computer
model, the diagram or the model could become part of the organization's
knowledge. But if we don't (and even if we do -- "the map is not the
territory" after all), the structure I've described is not what I would
choose to call knowledge. Yet that structure changes over time, can be
changed by explicit policy decisions or by other changes in how people act
within the organization, and therefore is a result of what I call
"organizational learning."
I have sympathy with the fact that we don't have very good language to
describe such things as processes, systems, (causal) structures, attitudes
and the like -- so I understand the desire to broaden our definition of
"knowledge" to include such things. But until we agree, as a community,
to use "knowledge" in this broader way, I'm not willing to be sloppy in
the use of the term. Not because I'm a language purist, but because I am
afraid of the consequences of this sloppy usage. I have in mind, for
instance, those in the KM community who would seem to want us to believe
that everything we need as a learning organization can be provided by
computer "memory" systems that capture organizational "knowledge" (I'm
exaggerating a little here.) I don't believe that is true -- it's
important to capture knowledge, but it's not everything that an
organization learns nor everything it needs to learn.
Does this help, or merely add layers to the confusion?
John W. Gunkler
jgunkler@sprintmail.com
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>