Because I am writing a doctorate I read a great deal, and across many disciplines. Some of the interesting facts I have come across recently are: 

• Stanley Milgram’s famous small world experiment of 1967, since popularised as ‘six degrees removed’, was first proposed and proved by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in 1929. 
• Molecular chaperones are proteins that protect other proteins and help our cells survive. The chaperone proteins are altruistic and display network characteristics.
• People with lower or higher socioeconomic status, as well as groups under stress use strong links rather than weak links . This means these groups are much more closed, and not as open to diversity or new ideas. 
• Five seems to be a special number. Dunbar has showed that we have circles of 5, 15, 35, 80 and 150 people, which correspond to our family, our close friends, our colleagues and acquaintances, our club and business affiliations, and finally our village or neighbourhood. My own analysis of actKM 12 months ago showed actKM has many of the characteristics of Dunbar’s theory.

So what you say? Well I think knowledge practitioners should read widely, inside and outside the discipline, such that it is. We should recognise there is little that is completely new. We should borrow and use ideas from other disciplines to advantage. For example the notion of a chaperone is interesting and applicable to knowledge management.

Traditionally a chaperone was a mature adult (usually a matron) who supervised unmarried men and women during social occasions to prevent inappropriate social interactions or illegal behaviour. (My daughter could have done with one two nights ago – see “Where is the War on Drugs? ”!) The chaperon was typically accountable to a third party. Now it seems to me that knowledge managers are a bit like chaperones. Usually they are accountable to another party or parties, and their role is to connect people to the right people, and people to the right information.

On the other hand the chaperone’s role was to ensure inappropriate liaisons did not occur – in this sense they were preserving the homogeneity of the social group, and the ties were strong ties. The danger for a knowledge manager is reinforcing homogeneity to an unhealthy degree. Knowledge managers should be the weak tie bridge, and therefore need good social and information networks. This is where Dunbar’s numbers enter the equation.

Knowledge managers need to build their networks, but at the same time recognise there is a finite number they can actively manage. I suggest they need weak ties in the order of 35 to 150 people. These people need to come from inside and outside the organisation.

So to summarise I think chaperones are necessary in a knowledge management initiative, and network size matters!

Regards, Graham.

References:

Dunbar, RIM 1998, Grooming, gossip, and evolution of language, Harvard University Press.

Granovetter, M 1983, ‘The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited’, Sociological Theory, vol. 1, pp 203-233.

Milgram, S 1967, ‘The small-world problem’, Psychology Today, vol. 1, pp 62-67.