Knowledge Matters™

I haven't been blogging lately - sorry! The reasons are I have been quite ill and have only just gotten over it; I am overwhelmed at work; and I have been trying to write my PhD thesis. I have neglected the thesis for most of the year, and decided it was getting away from me, so my discipline is to write something every day, which means blogging takes a back seat. Today I thought I would share with you a concept I call the Philosophical Trinity.

Choosing an appropriate research strategy is difficult. It requires a deep and honest reflection of one's own beliefs. It requires commitment to the relationship between the philosophical trinity, the research paradigm, and the research methodology or methodologies. The philosophical trinity answers the questions ‘What exists?', ‘How do I know?', and ‘What is valuable? Each question is a discipline in its own right, respectively known as ontology, epistemology and axiology. The philosophical trinity is depicted below.

Ontology is the philosophy of the world view of reality. Sometimes, and in particular in the systems thinking schools, world view is called ‘weltanschauung'. The seminal ontological question for a researcher is - ‘Is there a "real" world out there that is independent of our knowledge of it?' The answer to this question firmly positions the researcher into one of two schools. The first school is often known as the essentialist or foundationalist school, and the second rather unimaginatively as the anti-foundationalist school.

The essentialist school argues that there are fundamental and enduring differences in social phenomena that exist in all contexts and across time. Such a position means that social phenomena can in essence be decomposed to constituent parts. ...

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Just over a month ago, and before the current debate on wisdom management began in earnest on actKM, I had a brief exchange with Professor Bruce Lloyd on the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. Bruce kindly pointed me to a number of his papers. I've reproduced them below, some with hyperlinks. ...

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Time, like the term knowledge, is an elusive concept. Like knowledge, a definition of time that is satisfactory to everyone has defied the greatest minds from Antiphon to Newton, and on to Einstein and Planck. Yet time is pervasive across cultures, and at least in the Western world, drives much of what we do. Time is also intrinsically linked to knowledge management, and provides some insights as to why knowledge management is so difficult.

Take for example the common platitude –“just in time knowledge management”. I take this to mean that the right information (I have chosen my words carefully) should be available to decision-makers at the right time and in the right place, and not before or after the time it is actually required! Now this begs all sorts of questions, like:

• How do we determine what is the right information?
• How do we know who should receive that information?
• What is the right format for the information, so it can actually be used?
• How do we know what the right time is?

I could go on but you should get the idea of just how difficult, if not impossible this is. This brings me to my second idea – knowledge management is about the effective use of data or information at some future point in time. ...

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Several posts ago I introduced the notions of “truth types” and “belief ” , and in a later post I introduced the idea of “justified true belief ” . I closed these two posts with the uncomfortable proposition that knowledge can be whatever we believe it to be! I also suggested this is precisely why 80% of all knowledge management initiatives fail – we simply don’t have shared understanding and meaning. Despite these difficulties increasingly I find knowledge practitioners, and by default their initiatives, can be positioned into one of three schools.

The first school is the Autopoietic School. This school’s position is that knowledge belongs to individuals since information, which is mere data in context, needs to be interpreted according to the individual’s internal mental model. This means that knowledge as such is extremely difficult to transfer. I think those practitioners whose emphasis is narrative fit into this school. ...

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Yesterday I posed the question – “Is the word ‘knowledge’ content free? ” I addressed the propositions that knowledge consists of facts, and facts represent either analytic or synthetic truths. I now want to introduce beliefs to the equation, because most, but not all, knowledge management models have a ‘justified true belief’ foundation.

Beliefs are something that we hold to be true. To the individual beliefs are facts that are derived from either analytic or synthetic truths, or some other source such as an authoritative reference or person. Our dictionary definition of knowledge says it consists of facts and truths. So a belief is a truth; yet it is possible to hold a mistaken belief – that is we believe something to be true when in fact it is false. Clearly then a mistaken belief should not be considered to be knowledge. But how do we determine whether a belief is true or otherwise? ...

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In my second blog-post I implored those who profess to be knowledge practitioners to read some basic philosophy, and in particular some epistemology. To fill this hole I thought over the next couple of blog-posts I would introduce ‘truth types’ and ‘belief’.

In my opinion one of the problems with the knowledge management discipline is we can’t define what it means, and in particular we can’t define in a consistent way what we mean by knowledge. The Macquarie Dictionary provides eight definitions of knowledge. The first says knowledge is ‘acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, from study or investigation.’ Another says knowledge is the ‘perception of fact and truth and being cognisant or aware of fact or circumstance.’ The last definition says knowledge is the ‘body of truths or facts accumulated by human beings in the course of time'. From these definitions we might deduce that in order to have knowledge one must first have some facts. ...

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One of my interests is philosophy, and in particular epistemology and ethics . I provide an invited presentation to the Australian Defence College twice a year titled – “Rwanda: A Case Study in Ethical and Leadership Dilemmas ” . The key points of the presentation are:

• Ethics are reflective of societal norms and vary within society and groups.
• Ethics are as much an attitude as they are a set of values, skills and knowledge.
• Ethics are not constant – they will vary from society to society, and group to group.
• Decisions are developed within an attitudinal framework.
• Do not expect your colleagues to apply your own ethics to their decisions.
• The focus should be on decision making, not on issues of ethics in isolation.

But I digress. Pat Byrne sent me this link to the Carnegie Council website , which is a great resource for anyone interested in ethics. (A good Australian resource is the St James Ethics Centre ). What caught my attention was the Ethical Blog Project , which naturally has its own blog called “The Ethical Blogger ”. Apparently this blog attracts thousands of visitors a day, and has been nominated by Google as a blog of note. I’ve added it to my bookmarks. ...

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In a recent post to actKM an attendee at actKM 2007 said of the question ‘What is knowledge management?’ – “We came to the conclusion that we could allow an individual interpretation - it was whatever it meant to you. Because KM was all about the processes.” Apparently this was the collective conclusion of a bunch of knowledge managers and practitioners who were taking part in the Adelaide Gurteen Knowledge Café Group . Now it’s not clear to me whether this group came to this conclusion at actKM 2007 or at some other time, but if this is the best collective wisdom of a bunch of knowledge managers and practitioners, then knowledge management is doomed!

Quite frankly I am amazed at these conclusions. Knowledge management is whatever you want it to be. Really! So I can call a business process reengineering initiative knowledge management. I can even rebadge down-sizing, restructuring and right-sizing efforts and call them knowledge management. Get real! No wonder the discipline is considered by many to be a black art! ...

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On Monday night I had dinner with Patrick Lambe , David Gurteen , Mark Blackburn and Patrick Byrne . There was no purpose to the dinner other than to enjoy each others company. The conversation was wide-ranging and stimulating. We talked about subjects ranging from axiology and ethics, to science fiction writers and physicists, and even killing grounds, surfaces and gaps! It was a great night, and some of the conversation is worth recounting (as best as I can remember it).

David Gurteen told us about an abbey in England, which is surrounded by World War II pillboxes and dragon’s teeth . (Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the abbey or the town). David was intrigued by the location of the dragon’s teeth, and initially couldn’t understand why they were where they were. From the description David provided, Patrick Byrne and I as former soldiers immediately recognised that they were obstacles designed to channel and concentrate an enemy force into a killing ground of choice. This discussion then led to talk about how military strategy can be applied to business and even knowledge management. In particular we talked about surfaces and gaps, Schwerpunkt and Auftragstaktik . ...

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The actKM list serve has had much discussion in recent months on the meaning of knowledge and knowledge management. Some of this discussion is banal, and some posters were heated in their exchanges. I think knowledge management practitioners would do themselves and their discipline a service if they read some philosophy, and in particular some epistemology.

Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge and justification. A person’s epistemological stance is determined in part by their ontological position, or world view of reality. Epistemology is regulative – that is it seeks to prove or disprove that something is knowledge. Knowledge management theory tends to be generative – that is it tends to try to understand how knowledge is grown and fostered. ...

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