Discordant Fodder in Knowledge Management

“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values” -Marshall McLuhan-

Knowledge management as a strategic organizational devise, or medium, is touted to hold one of the highest potentials for gaining efficiencies, and creating value (Becker, B. 2006). It allows organizations to develop, use and preserve intellectual capital and perform knowledge work (Stewart, 1997). This knowledge management meme both enables and requires organizations to continually learn new knowledge and systematically deploy it for value creation (Pinchot and Pinchot, 1994). The apparent objective of knowledge management is therefore to create and strategically maintain human resources that are capable of continually creating competitive advantage for their companies. In this way, knowledge management, a sub construct of Cartesian thought, upholds the perception of the necessity for constructing order in organizations.

Global events currently bare witness to the destructive power of modern organizations, and the power of blind compliance to their precepts - and rather than fueling the need to further underlie order to this chaos, as the evolution of knowledge management is bound to do, the time is ripe to empower a discordant movement embodying a radical distancing from Cartesian imperatives of the so called intelligent organization and its knowledge management practices. The intelligent organization embracing competitive advantage and engaging any knowledge management strategy as a primary tool for survival is ripe fodder for a discordant hostile takeover.

The Managing Knowledge Polemic
“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.” -Marshall McLuhan-

Much of the research on knowledge management goes back to the distinction made by
the philosopher Michael Polanyi between ‘tacit’ and ‘explicit’ knowledge (Polanyi, 1962). Tacit knowledge is specific to a particular context, often unspoken, and acquired by trial and error, or watching how others do it. Explicit knowledge is more universal, codified, and acquired by formal education and training. An example of tacit knowledge is the ability to drive a car. Explicit knowledge is set out in the car’s manual or handbook which prescribes when the oil should be changed. Tacit knowledge may become codified in manuals, or statements of official doctrine set out in speeches by organizational executives, or in annual reports for example. The relationship between tacit and codified knowledge is often one of power and authority.

In their review of the literature on knowledge management, Alavi and Leidner (2001)
identify four general social processes: creating knowledge; storing and retrieving it; transferring it; and applying it. This tends to frame knowledge as a thing, ‘out there’, to be manipulated, rather than a process embodied in particular people, and their relationships with each other. Furthermore, knowledge is often defined as the top end process in a hierarchy of information and data. Information and data can be stored in files and discs, but it does not become useful knowledge until it is processed in the minds of individuals and is presented in the form of words or symbols (Alavi and Leidener, 2001). Its representation in words and symbols (i.e knowledge management) makes it a collective as well as an individual phenomenon. However, when codified by knowledge management as explicit, serves to provide justification for increases in an organizations capacity for action, regardless of tacit definition or value.

Generally, we assume that knowledge is a good thing, and that the more it is
shared the better. But what should be obvious to most is that knowledge management allows for the inference that organizations also strategically keep secrets and ‘forget’ information in systematic ways (Thompson and Wildavsky, 1986). Knowledge management strategies often assume organizations must keep some kinds of secrets and may in fact provide capacity to use secrecy to cover up mistakes, and avoid accountability. On one hand, organizations may forget knowledge through long-term processes of misfiling or through shifts from paper based to electronic forms of storage; but through systematic knowledge management they may more deliberately ‘forget’ embarrassing knowledge, for example about their behavior under a previous director, or regime.

Secrecy is a fulcrum for discordant illumination. Informal tacit phenomena have always been critical to the success of formal systems and policies (Wenger, p. 217). These include those processes embodied in particular people and in their relationships to each other. Relationships are inter dependent and non linear rather than simple and linear ( Quinn Patton et al, 2007). Knowledge management serves the explicit secret in the face of tacit knowledge, in a manner similar to the current global economic media exposé where front page news paper articles describe economic recovery, but reading further inside the newspaper stories of hardship prevail.

In Lieu of a Conclusion
“Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.” -Marshall McLuhan-

This missive, a theatre of discordant thought, does not allow ‘knowledge’ to remain a neutral, sociological phenomenon merely carrying authority or credibility – but also asks if it is true or not. For example, that bodies of professional knowledge – for example in medicine or physics – that were once regarded as true are now regarded as false. Thomas Kuhn’s book on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions describes the process of ‘paradigm shifts’ between periods of normal science. (Illich, 1970). The medical profession has initiated a process of self-reflection on the empirical foundations of its doctrines in the movement for ‘evidence based policy making’(Nutley et al 2002). A similar process needs greater illumination in the knowledge management field. A re-engineering of perceptions is due. We need not manage knowledge, but rather need to think about our thinking of the value of organizations as possible conditioned responses; cages of ideas.

No one can say what force governs and creates the laws of physics, but perception is often regarded as being central to the process. Adopting the discordant, even paranoid, perception we may better fathom what constitutes one organization's reality or another’s hallucination. We may be better at challenging the organizational hallucination before it becomes consensus. Knowledge management must support a close scrutiny of these thorny questions in an attempt to grasp the rose of truth. It must plumb the mind of the paranoid, plumb the mind of the discordant, hoping to find the truth behind organizational communications as mere conjecture. If our beliefs and perceptions are creating our reality, it is time we looked more closely at what -- and who -- is creating our beliefs and molding our perceptions.

References:
Alavi, M. and D. Lender, ( 2001), Knowledge Management and Knowledge
Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues MIS Quarterly
25(1): 107-136
Becker. B., Gassman, O., (2006), Gaining Leverage Effects from Knowledge Modes within Corporate Incubators, Social Science Research Network, retrieved August 9, 2009 from: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=875085
Illich, I., (1970) Deschooling Society, retrieved August 9, 2009 from:
http://www.utwatch.org/archives/deschoolingsociety.html
Nutley, S., Davies, H, Walter, I. ( 2004) Learning from Knowledge
Management Conceptual Synthesis 2 Research Unit for Research Utilisation,
University of St Andrews. Retrieved August 26, 2009 from: http://portal.st
andrews.ac.uk/research-expertise/researcher/hd/publications
Pinchot, G., Pinchot, E. (1994), The end of bureaucracy and rise of the intelligent organization. Berret-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco.
Polanyi. M. (1962), Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy New
York: Harper Torchbooks
Stewart, T. (1997), Intellectual capital : The new wealth of organizations, Doubleday, New York,
Thompson, M, Wildavsky, A.(1986), A Cultural Theory of Information Bias in
Organisations Journal of Management Studies 23(3): 273-286
Wenger, E., (2002), Managing Organizational Knowledge through Communities of Practice, Harvard Business School Press, Boston M
Quinn Patton, M. , Zimmer, B.,Westley, F., (2007) Getting to Maybe How the World is Changed, Vintage Canada, Toronto ON

Idle Praxis

The role of communication in creating and sustaining healthy communities and enhancing grassroots community participation has been my personal professional focus in two primary ways: (1) Which communication dynamics need to be strengthened or balanced to discover positive and negative trends within the community to facilitate change (2) effective communication lays the path to success for both myself and for the community I work in and for.

A tertiary analysis of communication theory has fortified a repository of many sage words of advice: the study of communication theory offers the opportunity to be reflexive, engaged and an active participant with the conversation about communication theory. (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008, p 77); communication is one of the most persuasive, important, and complex aspects of human life. (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008.). Scholars have made many attempts to define communication but establishing a single definition has proved impossible (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008. ). Theories are not just things to be read and learned, they are constantly evolving works. (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). Theories are not mutually exclusive from social context and historical traditions, but perhaps a reflection of those (Craig, 2007). Communication theory serves as an avenue of thought to study specialized forms of discourse, cultivated means of thinking and talking (Craig, 2007). Communication Theory is intellectual refinement of ordinary practices; an acts of interpretation (Craig, 2007). Communication theory serves as a fruitful source of ideas and stimulated perfunctory thought (Craig, 2007).


Almost in contradiction to that safe repository, LittleJohn and Foss (Littlejohn and Foss 2008) classify communication as virtually indefinable. Peter Craig posits communication theory as practical while at the same time stating, “even as we do more theory, we become (collectively if not individually) less certain of exactly what we are doing or should be doing. (Craig 2007. ix) 2). Pursuing this professional uber quest within the context of communication theory his theory overload has lead to a dire personal diagnosis of analysis paralysis; the situation where too many choices make it difficult to concretize and cause mental clutter. (Schwartz 2004). The power of analysis paralysis has further had the effect of generating a seemingly idle and discordant praxis out of the uber quest, the predominant question shifting from how to create and sustain healthy communities to how to make sense of and act upon communication theory, which in itself shifts the quest back to how to create and sustain healthy communities.

A primary source for the incongruent need for order in thought, theory, and action comes from Aristotelian histrionics which argue that in the face of uncertainty, in a world based on chance, order emerges in a linear manner as the final and ideal form. Widespread Aristotelian based thinking has imbedded itself as a predominant academic model and has reinforced the idea that clutter and chaotic thought has little value in and of itself other than being observed as a mere component of a linear logical sequence moving toward a final resolution or theory. In an Aristotelian world, idle and dissonant praxis is the antithesis of the best conclusion.

Upholding the linear modality, Claude Shannon formulated a theory explaining the communication of information (Shannon – weaver model, 2003). Shannon’s Information Theory includes the basic elements of any general communication system. Information is the message. Communication is the medium through which the information is transferred and synthesized. According to Shannon, the basic elements of any general communication system includes the following: a) Source b) Sender c) Message d) Channel e) Receiver f) Destination and g) Noise source communication is not just what we talk. Expressions, gestures or visual sense.(4) But effective communication occurs only when the three important aspects of communication viz., 1) visual (used in seeing: the visual sense) (2) audio (pertaining to, or employed in the transmission, reception, or reproduction of sound) and 3) kinesics (the study of body movements, gestures, facial expressions, etc., as a means of communication) are in the right proportion. Therefore, in general, human communication may be defined as, “the process in which all of the three important aspects of communication is involved in the right proportion, in order to exchange information between humans in an effective manner.”
The compulsion toward linearity and the need to avoid dissonance is comparable to satisfying hunger and is reinforced in communication’s cybernetic tradition which states simply that people are more comfortable with consistency than inconsistency. (Festinger as quoted in Griffin, 2006, p 228) People seek homeostasis. The mind is imagined as a system that takes inputs from the environment in the form of information processes and then creates behavioural outputs (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). Festinger posits three possible outputs: the first registers the input as irrelevant; the second registers the input as consonant and third registers the input dissonant, registering the input as an opposition to some other consonant or irrelevant input; ergo cognitive dissonance is given its birth. The degree of dissonance experienced is a function of two factors (1) the relative proportions of constant dissonant elements and (2) the importance of the elements or issue (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008, p.77). Festinger imagined a number of methods for dealing with cognitive dissonance: (1) altering the importance of the issue of the elements involved, (2) changing one or more of the cognitive elements, (3)adding a new element to one side of the tension or the other, (4) seeing consonant information and (5) distorting or misinterpreting dissonant evidence (Littlejohn and Foss, p.78). The application of the theory of cognitive dissonance then is the active attempt to avoid it. LittleJohn and Foss use the metaphor of buyer’s remorse (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008, p79) to describe cognitive dissonance. Being plagued by regret and second thoughts after a tough choice, people seek information that vindicates their decision and dispels nagging doubt. If an individual states a belief that is difficult to justify, that person will attempt to justify the belief making his or her attitudes more consistent with the statement (Aronson, 2004, p. 164). We succeed in modifying our attitudes because we have succeeded in convincing ourselves that our previous attitudes were incorrect. Acting as if we believe something promotes the belief itself. What becomes illuminated is the ongoing potential for the Stockholm Effect en masse. People are not rational beings but rather rationalizing beings. Humans are motivated not so much to be right as to believe they are right and to justify their own actions beliefs and feelings. When they do something they will try to convince themselves and others that is was a logical reasonable thing to do. (Aronson, 2004, p. 164.

An excellent starting place for anyone wishing to experience analysis paralysis, in its own right, are the works of Roland Barthes. Challenging standard beliefs and theorizing on the interpretation of signs Barthes' ultimate goal was to explain how seemingly straightforward signs pick up ideological meaning and work to maintain the status quo. In Barthes’ theory, he states that a sign has a signifier and a signified. The signifier is something that is seen and grasped; what the signifier represents is the signified. You cannot have one with out the other. Manipulation of the signified is the means of retaining social control, or status quo, the modus operandi for modern social marketers, bank robbers, or even community developers.
Paulo Freire challenged the one way flow of Aristotelian histrionics; the traditional communication model. Freire insisted on the fact that communication is a process that cannot be considered in isolation away from social and political processes. But he, like others, called for a greater emphasis on praxis. Freire's "conscentiation" (Friere, 1970) means simply thoughts perceive reality as a process of transformation rather than a static entity. This challenged the one way flow and proposed a communication model rooted in dialogue and discussion. Praxis is reflexive of internal processes rather than external. This again creates a fresh fissure from which to nourish analysis paralysis. Applying Freire’s theory to augment community development strategies creates a paradox; community development is an external process intended to effect change in social structures where reflexivity is internal rather than external.
A parallel paradox is illuminated by extolling reflection on practice rather than theory (Bordieu, 1991). Those who create theory have an abstract logic that is different from the practical logic of those who live in the social world. Those who create theory, the observers, do not represent practical knowledge. Practical activities represent the world of action, things from the experience of participants. This participant-observer paradox has to do with a person's point of view. One is either a participant or an observer. The paradox emerges when one realizes that it is only as an observer that one comes to know that he is a participant and what that entails. What Bordieu wants to do is to create a theory based on practice where life is seen only through subjective experience.

Imagine now three dialogues: in the first a conversation is forgotten quickly, never to be recalled; in the second an enjoyable conversation takes place, but in recalling it content is not remarkable or specific; in the third, someone makes a statement you which you cannot immediately comprehend, and the result is confusion or perhaps embarrassment. What has occurred in the latter example becomes an occurrence of dramatic proportions that neither of the first two examples illustrate (Briankle, 2006,) . These are the theoretical examples offered by Briankle in an effort to postulate a truth in communication: that the sense of apprehension or uncertainly - when there is a moment, however minimal, of non understanding – is the true moment of communication. The sense of apprehension or uncertainly about what is to unfold more powerfully defines an event that is truly communicative when one does not understand. Communication can therefore take place when it appears not to take place. This theory offers yet another communication paradox – in this case to the linear communication model where communication is understood as an intentional and observable process of creating and sharing information for mutual understanding.
Overwhelmed by detail; better than anything that has been herein reviewed and considered, the best resolution of analysis paralysis comes from the Belgian artist Francis Alys’ work The Paradox of Praxis. In this work the artist took a very large block of ice and pushed it through the streets. The melting ice left an evaporating trail of water and eventually nothing more than a puddle evaporating in the street. Praxis is the idea of deep conviction that hard work brings tangible benefits. But as Alys communicated in this work the struggle slowly, steadily, inevitably dissipates transforming first into distraction (the focus on pushing the block of ice through the streets) eventually into trivial sport (playing and kicking the ice block, in its latter form, along the streets), and finally into a soon to be forgotten wet smudge evaporating on an anonymous city street. (Zwirner, The David Zwirner Gallery).

My conclusion: I hate this education.


**********


"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." -Nietzsche









References
Aronson, E. (2004). The Social Animal (9th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers.
Bordieu, P. (1990). In Other Words: Essays Toward a Reflexive Sociology. Sanford University Press
Bordieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge University Press
Briankle, C. (1996). Deconstructing Communication Representation, Subject, and Economics of Exchange, University of Minnesota Press.
Craig, R. T., & Muller, H. L. (2007). Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Griffin, E. (2006). A First Look at Communication Theory (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Littlejohn, S. W., & Foss, K. A. (2005). Theories of Human Communication (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Schwartz, B. (2004). The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More, Harper Collins/ECCO. New York, NY.
The Shannon-Weaver Model. In CCMS, Communication Culture and Media Studies, retrieved January 16, 2009 from http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/index.html
Watson, J., & Hill, A. (1989). A Dictionary of Communication and Media Studies (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.
Zwirner, D. David Zwirner Gallery. The Paradox of Praxis. Retrieved January 13, 2009 from www.davidzwirner.com/news/87/work_2902.htm

Go...read!

http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/only-in-america-could-misery-be-turned-into-a-commodity/

Bitter Ghosts

Deep within the depths of my psyche lies a strange and mostly untold longing…at times I can describe it as a longing for perfection, sometimes for transcendence or for deep understanding, for peace, for solitude for friendship, for love or for forgiveness. I see this garden of wasted things in the stories told by the lines on people’s faces, the stories told by the unseen reams of project reports and evaluations stacked up in vast lifeless file rooms; experts spewing forth exactitudes in chorus decrying obvious patterns of inefficiency and imposing radical compliance to a miraculous new order; good folk cranking out political strategy which is ultimately of no greater value than self imposed exile, the hell we create for ourselves, the hell we choose therefore to live in.

Humanity must find better social devises which are less insidiously destructive of fundamental values.

Magpie is my way of building personal guideposts to to direct the support of a multidimensional balance of human life; guideposts which can serve as a framework for evaluating the parameters of human endeavors within which human life remains viable.

Society can be destroyed - becoming a garden of wasted things - when it extinguishes the free use of natural ability when it people are isolated from each other and locked into a man-made shell, when the texture of community is undermined by promoting extreme social polarization and splintering specialization, or when cancerous acceleration enforces social change at a rate that rules out legal, cultural, and political precedents as formal guidelines to present behaviour. Corporate endeavors which thus threaten society cannot be tolerated. At this point it becomes irrelevant whether an enterprise is nominally owned by individuals, corporations, or the slate, because no form of management can make such fundamental destruction serve a social purpose.

The Magpie

The Magpie

By Robert S. Warshow, '33

I walked one day
In the Garden of Wasted Things,
And there I found
The bitter ghosts of all that had been spent unwisely,
Or lost through brutal circumstance.

I found the childhood
That some labourer's child had never known;
I found the youth that some young man had squandered;
There I found some poet's genius
That had gone unrecognised.

I saw the ghosts of idle words,
And small talk,
That men had used to waste away the hours.

I saw the hopes that had been smothered,
And all the dreams
That never had come true,
And Laughter that had died for lack of bread.

I met with all the lives that had been misdirected,
And spoke with dreary shades
Of loves that might have been,
And songs that never had been sung.

I met with all these ghosts,
And many more;
And each of them
Sat silently in the shadows,
Brooding over quirks of mad Creation,
And puppets' dreams.

Lets me rephrase that

Loss of Perception: Acquisition of apathy...(cont)

CHAPTER 2: let me rephrase that

So perhaps what fulfills me is the sense of nothingness – so therefore fulfillment is the acquisition of a state of being absolutely devoid of feeling – devoid of the feeling associated with the pursuing of lofty goals.

The loss of perception… the acquisition of apathy

(ramblings from a previous version of my brain)

CHAPTER 1: Seeking a fulfilling life is an absolute and complete waste of time.

Sitting slouched over my superego I perch ripe for the taking of my own life. Not by any typical manner, but by the slow and stealthy complexity of an unfulfilled but arrogant perception of life.

Writhing with contempt for the stupor of glad overtures by the minions of stupid humans groping their way toward Godly happiness; merely an undeserving ennui gained not by healthy indulgence and savoring of epicurean delight or fascination of spontaneous virtue, but like sheep to the slaughter – gleeful for no other reason than that exemplified by pursuance of and success in embracing the popular path. Weak lives framed by the myopia of the over-simplification of right and wrong.

And so it begins

I have a foreboding sense that my entry into the blogosphere via a Google tool is condemning me to the pits of privacy hell...exposing myself to the microchip in the brain path...big brother is monitoring every fart and burp...well, so B it...monitor away you single synapse morons if you must...at this point I've ingested enough of your fluoride and your Bisphenol A that I'm pretty much hooped anyway...

...and so I begin to craw my way out of the abyss...