Archetypes Don't Matter!

I have a confession – I can’t see the long-term, and sometimes even the short-term, use of many soft knowledge management techniques. Take for example archetypes. In August I attended a talk by Patrick Lambe where he used archetypes to explain the ‘Seven Deadly Sins of Knowledge Management’. Today he ran a workshop at the actKM 2007 conference on ‘Getting Management Buy-in for a KM Initiative ’, which unfortunately I couldn’t attend. The abstract says he will introduce the archetypes, and participants will draft and test messages for each management archetype. Coincidentally Monday’s Canberra Times also had an article on archetypes, and referenced a book by Katie Altham called ‘Who are they? ’ Archetypes are obviously popular at the moment but I am not convinced they have real enduring value.

Patrick has one set of archetypes and Katie Altham has some 100 archetypes which are quite different. Her archetypes use names from mythology, like Apollo, Zeus, Dionysus, Hermes and Aphrodite. Now this is all well and good as an attention grabbing exercise and even as a bit of fun, but does it have a grounded evidence base? Both Patrick and Katie claim it does however before I am convinced I would like to see the underlying data. It all seems too simplistic to me. Further it appears to me to be at best an extension and simplification of Carl Jung’s work, and at worst little better than pop psychology or even horoscopy.

Several days ago I blogged about Corrupted Ideas . The thrust of this blog was that half of the black art problems of the knowledge management discipline come from corrupted ideas, and that we should take the time to review source documents because they matter. Archetypes seem to me be a corrupted idea, but maybe I’m wrong. Even if the archetype idea keeps some purity of thought, I’m not convinced of their utility. I have the greatest respect for Patrick, and I don’t know Katie, so I’ll leave it to them to defend their position and perhaps even convince me. Right now for me archetypes don’t matter!

Regards, Graham.



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Re: Archetypes Don't Matter!

Submitted by Dave Snowden on Fri, 26/10/2007 - 02:27.

There is a big difference between emergently derived archetypes from stories (grounded, good research base) and an attempt to create some form of universal "archetypes" which I would call steriotypes.  The greek name idea is an example of the latter and I would agree with you that it is pop psychology.  Patrick in part derived his archetypes emergently (as far as he could given the circumstances).  Not perfect but different.  

Re: Archetypes Don't Matter!

Submitted by Graham Durant-Law on Fri, 26/10/2007 - 18:24.

Thanks for your comments David.

I certainly don't like the universal arechetype model. The impression I gained from Patrick's presentation earlier in the year was he was also trying to use data to generalise.

Of course all research seeks to use the specific to generalise, or come up with a law or model. I don't think this is really possible with the archetypes, and even if it is possible in the specific circumstance I wonder whether there is enduring value, or whether it is better to use it as a one off diagnostic method to aid understanding. I'm still not convinced.

Regards, Graham