2009年12月9日 星期三

SYSTEMIC THINKING IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

SYSTEMIC THINKING IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
YOSHITERU NAKAMORI
School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
1-1 Asahidai, Nomi, Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan
E-mail:nakamori@jaist.ac.jp
This paper considers the problem of knowledge integration, and proposes a theory of knowledge construction systems, which consists of three fundamental parts: a knowledge construction system, a structure-agency-action paradigm, and evolutionally constructive objectivism. The paper starts with a brief introduction of our basic systems approach called informed systems thinking, followed by a summary of our proposal: a theory of knowledge construction systems, and then gives a detailed explanation of the theory.
1. Introduction
The main principle of the theory of organizational knowledge creation proposed in Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) is that new knowledge is created by the interaction of explicit and tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge refers, in the field of knowledge management, to knowledge known by an individual, which is difficult to communicate to others because it includes emotions and intuition. Therefore, socialization and externalization are emphasized in Nonaka theory to obtain group explicit knowledge from individual tacit knowledge via group tacit knowledge; the last is shared mental models, technical skills, etc.
Another important concept in Nonaka theory is Ba which is a Japanese word meaning place. Nonaka uses it as creative environment; actually Nonaka and Konno (1998) called the dynamic context which is shared and redefined in the knowledge creation process Ba, which does not refer just to a physical space, but includes virtual spaces based on the Internet, for instance; and more mental spaces which involve sharing experiences and ideas. They stated that knowledge is not something which can exist independently; it can only exist in a form embedded in Ba, which acts as a context that is constantly shared by people.
Similar ideas exist in systems theory: for instance, Churchman (1970) states that all knowledge is dependent on boundary judgments. This paper follows this idea in such a way that our theory chooses three important dimensions (or subsystems) from the high-dimensional Creative Space (Wierzbicki and Nakamori, 2006) and require actors to work well in each dimension (or subsystem) in collecting and organizing distributed, tacit knowledge. These are Intelligence (a subsystem or a scientific dimension), Involvement (a subsystem or a social dimension) and Imagination (a subsystem or a creative dimension). When the theory is interpreted from a viewpoint of sociology, the Creative Space is considered as Social Structure which constrains and enables human action, and consists of a scientific-actual front, a social-relational front and a cognitive-mental front corresponding respectively to the three dimensions or subsystems.
Our theory introduces two more dimensions or subsystems: Intervention and Integration, which correspond to social action and knowledge from a sociological point of view. This paper follows the definition of systemic intervention in Midgley (2000) that systemic intervention is purposeful action by an agent to create change in relation to reflection upon boundaries. Our actors collect knowledge on all three structural dimensions or fronts, with a certain purpose, and synthesize those distributed knowledge to construct new knowledge. In this sense, the subsystem Intervention together with Integration corresponds to Midgley's systemic intervention. As Wang Yang-Ming the 14th-century Confucianist contends that knowledge and action are one, for purpose, and with consequences (Zhu, 2000).
The theory to be presented in this paper aims at integrating systematic approach and systemic (holistic) thinking; the former is mainly used in the dimensions or subsystems Intelligence, Involvement and Imagination, and the latter is required in the dimensions or subsystems Intervention and Integration. Leading systems thinkers today often emphasize holistic thinking (Jackson, 2003; Mulej, 2007), or meta-synthesis (Gu and Tang, 2005). They recommend and require systems thinking for a holistic understanding of the emergent characteristic of a complex system, and for creating a new systemic knowledge about a difficult problem confronted. Our theory aims at synthesizing objective knowledge and subjective knowledge, which inevitably requires intuitive, holistic integration.
With a similar idea, Wierzbicki et al. (2006) proposed an informed, creative systemic approach, named Informed Systems Thinking, which should serve as the basic tool of knowledge integration and should support creativity. This systemic thinking emphasizes three basic principles: the principle of cultural sovereignty, the principle of informed responsibility, and the principle of systemic integration. If the first is a thesis, then the second is an antithesis and the third is a synthesis.
The problem here is: how are we to fulfill a systemic integration in the context of knowledge synthesis? One of the answers to this is Theory of Knowledge Construction Systems, the topic of this paper, which consists of three fundamental parts: a knowledge construction system (Nakamori, 2000, 2003), a structure-agency-action paradigm (Nakamori and Zhu, 2004), and evolutionally constructive objectivism (Wierzbicki and Nakamori, 2007). The main characteristics of this theory are: fusion of the purposiveness paradigm and purposefulness paradigm, interaction of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, and requisition for knowledge coordinators.
2. Theory of Knowledge Construction Systems
Wierzbicki et al. (2006) proposed to redefine systems science as the discipline concerned with methods for the intercultural and interdisciplinary integration of knowledge, including soft inter-subjective and hard objective approaches, open and, above all, informed. Intercultural means an explicit accounting for and analysis of national, regional, even disciplinary cultures, means trying to overcome the incommensurability of cultural perspectives by explicit debate of the different concepts and metaphors used by diverse cultures. Interdisciplinary approach has been a defining feature of systemic analysis since Comte (1844), but has been gradually lost in the division between soft and hard approaches. Open means pluralist, as stressed by soft systems approaches, not excluding by design any cultural or disciplinary perspectives (Linstone, 1984; Jackson and Key, 1984; Flood and Jackson, 1991). Informed means pluralist as stressed by hard systems approaches, not excluding any perspectives by ignorance or by disciplinary paradigmatic belief, and is most difficult to achieve.
A basic novel understanding related to this approach is the essential extension of the skeleton of science (Boulding 1956). Wierzbicki et al. (2006) named this approach Informed Systems Thinking which consists of three principles:
• The principle of cultural sovereignty: We can treat all separate levels of systemic complexity as independent cultures, and generalize the old basic cultural anthropology: no culture shall be judged when using concepts from a different culture.
• The principle of informed responsibility: No culture is justified in creating a cultural separation of its own area; it is the responsibility of each culture to inform other cultures about its own development and be informed about development of other cultures.
• The principle of systemic integration: Whenever needed, knowledge from diverse cultures and disciplines might be synthesized by systemic methods, be they soft or hard, without a prior prejudice against any of them, following the principle of open and informed systemic integration.
It is, however, quite difficult to perform the principle of systemic integration unless we have theories or methods for knowledge construction. We summarize here the theory of knowledge construction systems, the main proposal of this paper, which consists of three fundamental parts:
• A knowledge construction system: A basic system of the theory called the i-System to collect and organize a variety of knowledge, which itself is a systems methodology (Nakamori, 2000, 2003).
• A structure-agency-action paradigm: A sociological interpretation of the i-System to emphasize the necessary abilities of actors when collecting and organizing knowledge (Nakamori and Zhu, 2004).
• Evolutionally constructive objectivism: A new episteme to create knowledge and justify collected, organized, and created knowledge (Wierzbicki and Nakamori, 2007).
The main characteristics of this theory are:
• Fusion of the purposiveness paradigm and purposefulness paradigm,
• Interaction of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, and
• Requisition for knowledge coordinators.
With the i-System we always start with searching and defining the problem following to the purposiveness paradigm. Since the i-System is a spiral-type knowledge construction model, in the second turn we use the i-System to find solutions following the purposefulness paradigm. However, it is almost always the case that when we found an approximate solution we face new problems.
This paper accepts the idea of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) that new knowledge can be obtained by the interaction between the explicit knowledge and the tacit knowledge. The use of the i-System means that we have to inevitably treat the objective knowledge such as scientific theories, available technologies, social-economical trends, etc. as well as the subjective knowledge such as experience, technical skill, hidden assumptions, paradigms, etc.
The theory requires people who accomplish the knowledge synthesis. Such persons need to have the abilities of knowledge workers in a wide-ranging areas and of innovators. However they cannot achieve satisfactory results unless they possess the ability to coordinate the opinions and values of diverse knowledge and people. We should establish an educational system to train human resources who will promote knowledge synthesis in a systemic manner.
3. Knowledge Construction System
A knowledge construction system called the i-System was proposed in Nakamori (2000, 2003), which is a systemic and processual approach to knowledge creation. The five ontological elements or subsystems of the i-System are Intervention (the will to solve problems), Intelligence (existing scientific knowledge), Involvement (social motivation), Imagination (other aspects of creativity), and Integration (systemic knowledge), and they might correspond actually to five diverse dimensions of Creative Space.
These five ontological elements were originally interpreted as nodes. Because the i-System is intended as a synthesis of systemic approaches, Integration is, in a sense, its final dimension (in Figure 1 all arrows converge to Integration interpreted as a node; links without arrows denote the possibility of impact in both directions). The beginning node is Intervention, where problems or issues perceived by the individual or the group motivate their further inquiry and the entire creative process. The node Intelligence corresponds to various types of knowledge, the node Involvement represents social aspects, and the creative aspects are represented mostly in the node Imagination.
Observe that the node Intelligence, together with all existing scientific knowledge, corresponds roughly to the basic epistemological dimension (with three levels: Emotive Knowledge - Intuitive Knowledge - Rational Knowledge) of Creative Space. The node Involvement stresses the social motivation and corresponds roughly to the basic social dimension (with three levels: Individual - Group - Humanity Heritage) of Creative Space.
When analyzing these dimensions Wierzbicki and Nakamori (2006) have found that binary logic is inadequate and even rough, three-valued logic barely sufficient for a detailed analysis. For example, it is not only necessary to distinguish between the knowledge on the level of individual, group and humanity heritage; it is also important to distinguish motivation related to the interests of individual, group and humanity. While an organization operating in the commercial market rightly stresses the interests of the group of people employed by it (or of its shareholders), educational research activity at universities might be best promoted when stressing the individual interests of students and young researchers; on the other hand, the interests of humanity must be protected when facing the prospect of privatization of basic knowledge.


Figure 1: The i-System (from a systems scientific viewpoint).

Other nodes presented in Figure 1 indicate the need to consider other dimensions of Creative Space, and additional dimensions result in additional complexity. The node Imagination seems to be an essential element of only individual intuition; but it could include inter-subjective emotions and intuition. All creative processes can be related to three levels of imagination: Routine - Diversity - Fantasy. We utilize imagination in diverse degrees depending on the character of a creative process. The lowest level is Routine that involves imagination, but in a standard, well-trained fashion. We are able to use imagination more strongly, to involve an element of Diversity, but we must be motivated to do this by professional pride, pure curiosity, monetary rewards, etc. Finally, we have also the highest level of imagination, which might be called Fantasy. The 20th Century tradition of not speaking about metaphysics (started by Wittgenstein, 1922) relegated fantasy to the arts and the emotions. However, fantasy is an essential element of any highly creative process, including the construction of technological devices and systems.
The node Intervention is difficult to consider separately in Oriental philosophy and culture, with their concepts of unity of mind and body, and unity of man and nature: the will to do something is not considered as a separate phenomenon, it is simply a part of being, and being should be such as not to destroy the unity of man and nature. In a culture seeking consensus and harmony, such an explanation and such principles are sufficient. Western culture pays more attention to the problems related to human intervention and will. The concept of will, of freedom to act and intervene, has been for many centuries and still remains one of the central ideas of Western culture. Concerning any creative activity, it is clear that the role of motivation, of the will to create new ideas, objects of art, technological devices, etc. is a central condition of success. Without Drive, Determination, Dedication no creative process will be completed. By Drive we understand here the basic fact that creativity is one of the most fundamental components of self-realization of mankind. Determination is the concentrated Nietzschean will to overcome obstacles in realizing the creative process. Dedication is a conviction that completing a creative process is right in terms of Kantian transcendental moral law.
Integration in the original i-System is a node intended to represent the final stage, the systemic synthesis of the creative process. Thus, in this stage we should use all systemic knowledge; applying systemic concepts to newly created knowledge is certainly the only explicit, rational knowledge tool that can be used in order to achieve integration. Thus, any teaching of creative abilities must include a strong component of systems science. The apparently simplest is Specialized Integration, when the task consists of integrating several elements of knowledge in some specialized field. But even this task can be very difficult as, for example, the task of integrating knowledge about the diverse functions of contemporary computer networks. It becomes more complex when its character is Interdisciplinary, as in the case of the analysis of environmental policy models. However, the contemporary trends of globalization result today in new, even more complex challenges related to Intercultural Integration, as in the case of integration of diverse theories of knowledge and technology creation. In fact, the Intercultural Integration of knowledge might be considered a defining feature of a new interpretation of systems science.
4. Structure-Agent-Action Paradigm
The structure-agency-action paradigm was adopted when understanding the i-System from a social science viewpoint (Nakamori and Zhu, 2004). The i-System can be interpreted as a structurationist model for knowledge management. Viewed through the i-System, knowledge is constructed by actors, who are constrained and enabled by structures that consist of a scientific-actual, a cognitive-mental and a social-relational front, mobilize and realize the agency of themselves and of others that can be differentiated as Intelligence, Imagination and Involvement clusters, engage in rational-inertial, postrational-projective and arational-evaluative actions in pursuing sectional interests. Note that here we identify the elements Intelligence, Imagination and Involvement with agencies of actors. See Figure 2.
The following are the working definition of some keywords that are essential to the concerned paradigm. These keywords have quite different but deeply ingrained meanings in other disciplines beyond contemporary social theories.
• Structure: the systemic contexts and their underlying mechanisms, which constrain and enable human action.

Figure 2: A sociological interpretation of the i-System.

• Agency: the capability with which actors, who are socially embedded, reproduce and transform the world.
• Construction: the social process during which actors create, maintain and transform the world (both the structure and actors themselves).
The exploration in Nakamori and Zhu (2004) intended particularly to unpack the structure, agency and action black boxes, investigate the complexity, ambiguity and emergent properties internal to each of them, as well as those implicated in the relationships between. While structure complexity provides possibilities for innovation, agency complexity allows actors exploit those possibilities in differing ways. Knowing (integrating or in-forming) and practice (intervening) are seen as constituting each other, from which knowledge is emerging and embodied, over time, back into structures and agency.
In this paper we focus on the agency complexity only, which is directly related to the theory of knowledge construction systems. The i-System differentiates human agency into Intelligence, Imagination and Involvement clusters, so that agency can be understood in an organized way, not treated as a black-box.
By Intelligence we mean the intellectual faculty and capability of actors: experience, technical skill, functional expertise, etc. The vocabulary related to intelligence addresses logic, rationality, objectivity, observation, monitoring and reflexivity. The accumulation and application of intelligence are mission-led and rational-focused (Chia, 2004), discipline- and paradigm-bound, confined within the boundary of normal science (Kuhn 1962), which leads to knowing the game and incremental, component improvement (Tushman and Anderson, 1986).
Seeing Intelligence as inertial and paradigm-bound though, the i-System does not regard Intelligence as negative per se. Rather, to the i-System, Intelligence is indispensable for creativity. As Polanyi (1958) puts it, science is operated by the skill of the scientist and it is through the exercise of this skill that he shapes his scientific knowledge. Following Sewell (1992), we see the search for intelligence as a process of transposition: actors apply and extend codified rules and procedures to a wide and not fully predictable range of unfamiliar cases outside the context in which they are initially learned. Intelligence becomes liability to innovation only when it blocks actors from seeing alternatives.
In the Imagination cluster we include intuition, innocence, ignorance, enlightenmental skill and post-rationality, which leads to a vocabulary of feeling the game, playful, fun, chaotic, illogic, forgetting, upsetting, competency-destroying, knowledge-obsoleting and risk-taking. This brings us beyond the thoroughly-knowledgeable (Archer, 1995) and over-rationalized agents (Mestrovic, 1998) that are portrayed in Giddens's structuration theory (Giddens, 1979).
Involvement is the cluster in human agency that consists of interest, faith, emotion and passion, which are intrinsically related to intentionality and habits of the heart (Bellah et al., 1985), as well as the social capital (Bourdieu, 1985), social skill and political skill (Garud et al., 2002) that make intentionality and the heart being felt. As human agency, involvement can produce managerial and institutional effects, particularly in dealing with the social-relational front, in that it helps or hampers researchers' efforts to make the game.
Note that even if the actors work well using their agencies, this does not guarantee the validity of the obtained knowledge. We need a theory for knowledge justification, which will be given later by the name of Evolutionary Constructive Objectivism.
5. Evolutionary Constructive Objectivism
There is a general agreement that we are living in times of an informational revolution which leads to a new era. Knowledge in this era plays an even more important role than just information, thus the new epoch might be called Knowledge Civilization Era. Among many changes, the most important one might be the changing episteme - the way of constructing and justifying knowledge, characteristic for a given era and culture (Foucault, 1972).
The destruction of the industrial episteme and the construction of a new one started with relativism of Einstein, indeterminism of Heisenberg, with the concept of feedback and that of deterministic chaos, of order emerging out of chaos, complexity theories, finally with the emergence principle. The destruction of the industrial era episteme resulted in divergent developments of the episteme of three cultural spheres: hard and natural sciences, technology, and social sciences with humanities:
• Paradigmatism in hard and natural sciences (Kuhn, 1962) : Theories should fit to observations or outcomes of empirical tests, but such theories that are consistent with the paradigm are welcome, while theories that contradict the paradigm are rejected, even if they would better fit observations or empirical outcomes.
• Falsificationism in technology (Popper, 1934, 1972): Knowledge and theories evolve and the measure of their evolutionary fitness is the number of attempted falsification tests they have successfully passed.
• Postmodern subjectivism in social sciences and humanities: Knowledge is constructed by people, thus subjective, and its justification occurs only through inter-subjective discourse.
The episteme of knowledge civilization era is not formed yet, but it must include an integration, a synthesis of the divergent episteme of these three cultural spheres, as well as a synthesis of different aspects of Oriental and Western episteme. The integration must be based upon a holistic understanding of human nature; here humanity is defined not only by language and communicating, but also by tool making, and by curiosity.
This paper considers Evolutionary Constructive Objectivism as a possible episteme in the knowledge-based society, and adopts it as one of the elements of the theory of knowledge construction systems. It is originally considered for testing knowledge creation theories (Wierzbicki and Nakamori, 2007), consisting of three principles:
• Evolutionary falsification principle: Hypotheses, theories, models and tools develop evolutionarily, and the measure of their evolutionary fitness is the number of either attempted falsification tests that they have successfully passed, or of critical discussion tests leading to an inter-subjective agreement about their validity, which corresponds to the group tacit knowledge in Nonaka theory.
• Emergence principle: New properties of a system emerge with increased levels of complexity, and these properties are qualitatively different than and irreducible to the properties of its parts.
• Multimedia principle: Language is just an approximate code to describe a much more complex reality, visual and preverbal information in general is much more powerful and relates to intuitive knowledge and reasoning; the future records of the intellectual heritage of humanity will have a multi-media character, thus stimulating creativity.
Although these principles were developed with the purpose of validating knowledge creation models such as the i-System, this paper reuses them as principles to test the obtained knowledge. Because it usually takes time to evaluate new knowledge, the idea here is to evaluate the models, methods or processes through which the new knowledge emerges. See Figure 3.
Based on these three fundamental principles, we can give a detailed description of an epistemological position of constructive evolutionary objectivism, closer in fact to the current episteme of technology than to that of hard sciences.
• The innate curiosity of people about other people and Nature results in their constructing hypotheses about reality, thus creating a structure and diverse models of the world. Until now, all such hypotheses turned out to be only approximations; but we learn evolutionarily about their validity by following the falsification principle.
• Since we perceive reality as more and more complex, and thus devise concepts on higher and higher levels of complexity according to the emergence principle, we shall probably always work with approximate hypotheses.

Figure 3: Justification of knowledge through evaluation of tools to get it.

• According to the multimedia principle, language is a simplified code used to describe a much more complex reality, while human senses (starting with vision) enable people to perceive the more complex aspects of reality. This more comprehensive perception of reality is the basis of human intuition; for example, tool making is always based on intuition and a more comprehensive perception of reality than just language.
• A prescriptive interpretation of objectivity is the falsification principle; when faced cognitively with increasing complexity, we apply the emergence principle. The sources of our cognitive power are related to the multimedia principle.
Figure 3 shows the concept of justification of knowledge through evaluation of models, tools, etc. to get that knowledge as well as through evaluation of attitudes and agencies of actors or analysts in collecting that knowledge.
6. Concluding Remarks
This paper proposes a theory of knowledge construction systems, which consists of three fundamental parts: the knowledge construction system, the structure-agency-action paradigm, and evolutionally constructive objectivism. The first is a model of collecting and synthesizing knowledge, the second relates to necessary abilities when collecting knowledge in individual domains, and the third comprises a set of principles to justify collected and synthesized knowledge. This paper reached a conclusion that we should nurture talented people called the knowledge coordinators. How can we nurture such people? One of the answers is that we should establish knowledge science, educate young students by this discipline, and encourage learning by doing.
However, at the present stage, knowledge science is more a theme-oriented interdisciplinary academic field than a normal science. We believe that its mission is to organize and process human-dependent information and to feed it back to society with added value. Its central guideline is the creation of new value (knowledge) - such innovation being the driving force of society, but it mainly deals with the research area involving social innovation (organizations, systems, or reorganization of the mind). However, society's progress is underpinned by technology and the joint progress of society (needs) and technology (seeds) is essential, so it also bears the duty to act as a coordinator (intermediary) in extensive technological and social innovations.
In order to fulfill the above mission, knowledge science should focus its research on observing and modeling the actual process of carrying out the mission as well as developing methods to carry out the mission. The methods can be developed mainly through the existing three fields. These are the application of information technology/artistic methods (knowledge discovery methods, ways to support creation, knowledge engineering, cognitive science, etc.), the application of business science/organizational theories (practical uses of tacit knowledge, management of technology, innovation theory, etc.) and the application of mathematical science/systems theory (systems thinking, the emergence principle, epistemology, etc.).
However, it will take some time to integrate the above three fields and establish a new academic system. We should first attempt their integration in practical use (problem-solving projects), accumulate actual results and then to establish them as a discipline in a new field. Finally we believe that the concepts and directions of knowledge science will collapse the wall between hard and soft in systems science.
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