Clustering and Swarming as Self-Organizing Techniques

Author Merali Snowden

Businesses rely on employees to use Intellectual Capital and capiture it from outside. 'Knowledge Space' is a store of possible information that may be generated within some cognitve system, constrained by language or culture of that system. Organisations have captive knowledge which may be explicit or tacit. Merali looks to biological examples in explaining the dynamic nature of communication.

• There is no single identifiable network in organisations - there are multiple networks. Individuals have a sense of identity but so does the organizations itself. The infomation that is passed may be codified in many different ways with various levels of Abstraction
• Some networks are structured more than others. People are autonomous but contrained by organizations rules
• Why would one software get preferred over another. It may not be rational but feedback may lead to swarming.
• There may be certain attractors that lead to convergence - like silicon valley
• "Information involves the notion of meaning and meaning makes the whole legitimization of what constitutes Knowledge becomes subjectives"

What counts as Knowledge?

It is not about managing knowledge but making sense of why something happened and try influence the future Boisot; Knowledge creation involves scanning, codification, Diffusion and absorption. In information transfer there is context dependency. Abstraction can make the information too generalized. Alternatively too much emphasis on a particular situation may obscure generalized findings We need the flexibility of flocking and swarming of new Knowldge groups rather than the normative Communities of Practice that die out once technology changes Learning in Organizations is about bottom up and top down, about outliers and communicating with the outside.

The 7 sins of Knowledge Management

• 'Knowledge can be managed'. There is always a loss of context when infomation is shared. It is imposing a mechanical structure on something that is organic.
• The organization can be designed. They are too complex. we should start 'journeys' rather than aims
• The myth of a rational agent. Culture, past experience can prevent people from acting rationally - it is merely rational from their lens
• Utilitarianism. Do people do something for a return or is status and deference a powerful source also
• A belief in Utopia. Nothing is perfect so accept for now that things are working
• Belief in Best practice. Looking back is a poor guide to the future
• An organization is merely a collection of individuals. Its more than that there are relationships and impacts from outside the organization as well

Action-based research

Introduce a new model which disrupts the status quo and look to see how well the process can be restructured in terms of community, culture, knowledge, exchange

• There are four realms of spaces by which a business can be classified
  • Knowledge flow is OK to maintain the business
  • Knowledge flow allows the process to be optimized
  • Knowledge creation is chaotic
  • Knowledge is created in a complex way

Cynefin - Habitat - anything we do has some connection with our past, culture relationships. Learning is about continuity not green field thinking