Dear Colleagues,
Without addressing the entire scope of this is rich and interesting
thread, I want to offer a view on knowledge from the perspective of
knowledge management.
Many of us distinguish between data, information, knowledge, and
wisdom. While this distinction was not as common as it is becoming,
this has been a key characteristic of the Scandinavian perspective on
knowledge management.
One of the difficulties we typically encounter in the emergence of a
discipline or a new conceptual framework is the use of terms. This is
as true of knowledge management as it is of any other field.
Some areas of knowledge management suffer from the confusions Tim
Smithers notes. There are two main streams of knowledge management,
and only one of these suffers from that confusion.
The term knowledge management refers to three things. The first is
the research field known as knowledge management. The second is a
professional practice of the same name. The third is the network of
social and technical systems that support these.
The research field examines human knowledge as a central factor in
producing goods and services. While knowledge management is now a
distinct field with a philosophical perspective and an applied focus,
it grew from many fields. These include management studies,
organization theory, communication, philosophy, sociology, and
information science.
Knowledge management develops systematic policies, programs, and
practices to create, share, and apply knowledge in organizations.
Practice is linked to theory through an explicit philosophy of
knowledge and learning.
Working with knowledge implies understanding organizations as
systems. Using knowledge requires individual and organizational
learning. This means working with people. As actors in a system,
human participants enable the organization to learn. Individuals
share, improve, and effectively recycle existing knowledge.
Social and technical systems support the process by helping
organizations to identify, select, acquire, store, organize, present,
and use information for problem solving, learning, innovation,
strategic planning, and decision-making.
Knowledge management involves two parallel streams. The first stream
is social. Philosophical, interpersonal, and organizational in
perspective, it involves human dynamics, dialogue, and organizational
learning. Such concepts as storytelling, communities of practice,
reflective practice, and behavioral modeling characterize what is
sometimes called a "person-to-person" approach. This approach to
knowledge management employs both tacit and explicit knowledge.
The second stream is technological. Based on information technology
and data processing, it uses information systems to harvest, gather,
codify, and represent knowledge. Such concepts as data warehousing,
data mining, knowledge mapping, and electronic libraries
characterized what may be termed a "people-to-documents" approach.
Because it is mediated through information systems, it is almost
exclusively explicit.
Knowledge management is a consequence of the information society. In
1940, Australian economist Colin Clark classified economies as
primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary economies extract wealth
from nature, secondary economies transform extracted material through
manufacturing, and tertiary economies engage in service. In 1967,
Daniel Bell built on this to describe three kinds of society.
Pre-industrial society extracts, industrial society fabricates, and
post-industrial society processes information. Bell argued that a
significant change in the character of knowledge was taking place,
with professional knowledge elite developing to manage it.
Knowledge has always been a key factor in productivity. The earliest
manufacturing took place over two and a half million years ago when
homo habilis made the first weapons and tools. The search for
productivity focused on scarce material resources and the challenges
of understanding the physical world. All manufacturing was handicraft
until the industrial revolution gave rise to mass manufacturing in
the nineteenth century. The wealth created in the industrialized
economies of the twentieth changed this.
By the 1940s, a focus on knowledge became inevitable. The ideas of
knowledge management have been emerging for several decades. For
example, W. Edwards Deming's work in post-war Japan reflects the
principles of knowledge management and organizational learning.
Economists such as Harold Innis and Fritz Machlup have gained
increasing importance, along with psychologists such as Abraham
Maslow and sociologists such as Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells. The
shift to knowledge management emerged in many places during the
1990s. Central figures include Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
in Japan, Mats Alvesson and Bo Hedberg in Sweden, George von Krogh
and Johan Roos in Switzerland, Max Boisot in England, Lawrence
Prusak, Peter Senge, and Karl Wiig in North America.
Effective work demands creating, sharing, and distributing
information as the raw material that individual and organizations
process into knowledge. The administrative principles of Henri Fayol
and Frederick W. Taylor restricted the flow of information and power
in vertically stratified organizations. The management principles of
a knowledge economy encourage the flow of information and knowledge
within dynamic networks.
The earliest example of knowledge management philosophy is found in a
book written circa 1,000 BC by Egyptian public administrator named
Amenemopet. From that time to our own, thinkers have articulated
knowledge management issues in such fields as philosophy, economics,
and management. Some are surprisingly contemporary. For example, a
1776 description of a pin factory by Adam Smith is now a case study
on intellectual capital.
3,000 years separate Amenemopet and Deming. The philosophical themes
of knowledge management have been remarkably durable. Theoretical
reflection and behavioral action form the substance of knowledge
management. This was true before knowledge management emerged as a
specific field. It remains true for any endeavor where human beings
add value to goods and services.
Defining knowledge across the interdisciplines of these several
fields is a particularly subtle problem. Many terms in ordinary
language are built on their relations one to the other in a recursive
cycle of interdependent meanings.
To understand the ways that information and knowledge are related in
an era variously called "the information age" and "the knowledge
economy," it is helpful to conceptualize the several levels of data,
information, and knowledge. Here, I will set forth some of the basic
definitions of the words we use.
I use these terms in a hierarchy of meanings that rise from (1) the
world of physical objects and human actions through (2) specific
perceived facts taken from the physical world in the raw form known
as data, through (3) data structured and organized into information,
which are, in turn, imbued with meaning to create (4) knowledge.
Finally, I will raise the issue of a level of effective knowledge
generally known as (5) wisdom.
It should be noted that the fuzziness of these terms makes it
possible for other scholars to use the same words in somewhat
different ways while attempting to articulate significant similar
concepts. I will hold to the structure I present here, supported by a
reasonable series of definitions.
On the first level, we find the world of phenomena, perceived and
unperceived. The world of unperceived phenomena lies outside our
consideration.
The perceived world generates data. Data can be described as facts
used for reasoning, discussion, or calculation. It is also the
information output of any sensing device or organ, and it may be
useful or irrelevant, even redundant. Data also includes numerical
information that can be digitally transmitted or processed. The
salient feature of data is that it is raw information, unprocessed
and therefore devoid of meaning (cf: Merriam-Webster, 1993: 293).
Data must be processed to be meaningful. Raw data are processed by
the biological or mechanical apparatus. This translation gives them
shape or form. Data, thus formed and given structure, become
information.
Merriam-Webster defines information as:
". . . 1: the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence
2 a (1): knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction
(2): intelligence, news (3): facts, data b: the attribute inherent in
and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or
arrangements of something (as nucleotides in DNA or binary digits in
a computer program) that produce specific effects c (1): a signal or
character as in a communication system or computer) representing data
(2): something (as a message, experimental data, or a picture) which
justifies change in a construct (as a plan or theory) that represents
physical or mental experience or another construct d: a quantitative
measure of the content of information; specifically. : a numerical
quantity that measures the uncertainty in the outcome of an
experiment to be performed . . ." (Merriam-Webster, 1993: 599).
Closely linked to these definitions, we find a concept that has been
linked with information throughout human history. The concept is
knowledge. Information is formed, but it has not yet been endowed
with meaning. Given form, data become information that, in turn,
becomes a basis for knowledge.
The difference between information and knowledge is not always clear,
but there are ways to divide them for the purposes of this study.
Knowledge involves knowing something through experience or
association and it is an acquaintance with or an understanding of any
science, art, or technique. Knowledge involves being aware of
something, and it describes the range or the limit of one's awareness
or understanding. Knowledge is also the total of what is known, the
comprehensive stock of truth, information, and principles of the
human species. It involves facts or ideas acquired by study,
investigation and research, and it can be acquired by observation or
through experience (cf: Merriam-Webster, 1993: 647).
Gregory Bateson defines information in a way reminiscent of physical
potential. His definition can almost be considered in the same way we
consider the energy potential of an engine or a hydropower
installation: "information is any difference that makes a difference"
(Bateson, 1984: 41).
Information is the potential to make a difference. The realized
potential of that power is the difference between information and
knowledge. This is so in the same way that water behind a dam
represents the potential energy available for work while energy
released as the water goes through the turbines is power. Francis
Bacon, the sixteenth-century scholar and a founder of the scientific
method, noted this difference in his Religious Meditations, Of
Heresies, where he wrote that, "knowledge itself is power" (in
Mackay, 1991: 21).
Peter Drucker respects that difference, and describes the
transformation of information into knowledge: "Knowledge is
information that changes something or somebody -- either by becoming
grounds for action, or by making an individual (or an institution)
capable of different and more effective action" (Drucker, 1990: 242).
Choices establish the grounds for action. Choices are therefore the
key to effective action. Here lies a difficult problem. We cannot
always choose until we know; we cannot always know until we find
ourselves in the appropriate situation that requires our knowledge;
we cannot always orchestrate the proper situation until we have
chosen. Johan Olaisen (1996) effectively describes this situation in
his analysis of the philosophy of science applied to information
science. Olaisen's analysis outlines the challenges that every
thinking person repeatedly confronts in the course of assembling the
knowledge of daily life.
Olaisen states that one must navigate sensitively through four
domains. The first is the domain of what we know that we know. The
second is the domain of what we know that we do not know. Navigating
the third domain is more problematic, since it requires us to work
with what we do not know that we know. Navigating the fourth is the
even more difficult, the domain of what we do not know that we do not
know (Olaisen, 1996).
Knowledge for effective action -- including knowing when not to act
-- is wisdom. Wisdom has generally been a respected word in
philosophy and theology. Scientific literature has shied away from
it. Perhaps this is so because wisdom is located in the subjective
mental processes of the human organism, either in the individual mind
located in a single physical body or in the social mind located in a
sociocultural body such as a tradition, a society, or a community.
The problem for many scientists is that these bodies of wisdom resist
quantitative investigation.
Further, wisdom can be intensely personal, located at the boundaries
of such existential and culture-bound concepts as authenticity,
personal truth, or integrity. Even so, wisdom is the subject of a
growing body of contemporary literature. It began in fields such as
philosophy and psychology (Jourard, 1964; Maslow, 1962; Moustakas,
1967; Watts, 1951). It has extended to information science,
informatics or social informatics (Johannesen, 1996; Olaisen,
1996).The concept has also become the subject for scholars in
organization and management studies, those branches of scholarship
most concerned with the consequences of effective decision making,
and scholars in these fields are examining the question of wisdom.
Some scholars focus on knowledge management (Alvesson, 1995;
Davenport and Prusak, 1997; McGregor, 1991; Myers, 1996; Nonaka and
Takeuchi, 1995). Others study hybrid capital, the multiple and
sometimes ambiguous forms of capital that include liquid capital,
capital assets, human capital and the various forms of capital
represented by processes, ideas, values and relationships (Hedlin,
1996; Polesie and Johansson, 1992). Intellectual capital is the frame
of an increasing body of current literature (Brooking, 1996;
Edvinsson, 1997; Fruin, 1997; Klein, 1997; Stewart, 1997; Sveiby,
1997). Some scholars even address the specific issue of managerial
wisdom (Malan and Kriger, 1998).
Wisdom is knowledge made effective through integrated learning,
values and action. It requires the ability to discern the qualities
and relationships among things known and it demands insight. Wisdom
is characterized by good sense and good judgment (cf:
Merriam-Webster, 1993: 1358).
There is an increasingly rich and philosophical discourse in the
field of knowledge management on the distinctions between data,
information, knowledge, and now, increasingly, wisdom.
Best regards,
Ken Friedman
References
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--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management
Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University
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