The Knowledge Ecology

BizEd (AACSB), Nov-Dec (updated version of original …, 2001

Be Introduced to "Knowledge Ecology" The emerging theory and practices of knowledge ecology are making 20 th-century ideas of management and business obsolete. Today, the measure of an organization's mettle is no longer the money in its coffers, but the knowledge and intelligence of its members, and their capacity to effectively collaborate in learning partnerships of all sizes and kinds, within and outside the formal organization. For example, think of an organization as an ecosystem, a living organism. When all of its constituents perform in concert, sharing and coordinating their efforts to enhance the possibilities for all members and the organization as whole, the ecosystem thrives. "Knowledge ecology" is about studying and enhancing the ways in which the parts and wholes of knowledge-generating systems relate to one another. It provides a framework for organizations who want to maximize their benefits from emerging technologies to facilitate effective c...

The systems thinker, 2000

Report written in collaboration with Erik van Bekkum. …, 2004

Social, Managerial and Organizational Dimensions, 2007

Chapter XI New Business Requirements in the Knowledge-Based Society Anca Draghici Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania ... This intangible, unstructured knowledge is difficult to manage; consequently, management has ignored it when designing busi-ness strategy. ...

The purpose of this paper is to describe a research to verify the relationship between learning organization (LO) attributes of cultural values; leadership commitment and empowerment; communication; knowledge transfer; employee characteristics; and performance upgrading, and the organizational readiness to change. The mobile phone service providers in Thailand have been selected to examine this relationship as most studies about learning organization are conducted in the more developed countries. The industry is chosen owing to the recent privatization policy in Thailand as well as its changing competitive contexts. Results of the study will be presented in a subsequent paper.

Strategy & Leadership, 2000

2008

Knowledge management is a general concept applied to almost any project that an organization undertakes, which is meant to transfer, share and exploit knowledge from one part of the organization to another. Most of the companies are already involved in knowledge management, even if, often, it is done informally and implicitly. The goal of a formal knowledge management program is just to make knowledge marketplaces to become more efficient. Many organizations are recognizing that the ownership of knowledge creates an important competitive advantage. Quite simply, the lack of a knowledge management program means that they are losing money or opportunities. The easiest kind of knowledge management project to justify is the 'knowledge base'. A knowledge base is something that attempts to make the knowledge marketplace more efficient by making explicit knowledge easier to access. Projects that aim to facilitate the transfer of knowledge work best when organizations recognize how the existing knowledge marketplace operates, so that they can work within it.

By looking at collective intelligence (CI) through four distinct lenses, this paper draws on recent research in organizational design, evolutionary economics, cognitive sciences, knowledge ecology and political economy to built a twin path forward: collective intelligence and collective leadership. It lays out elements of a framework for building this twin path beyond chaos. It is our intent to invite conversations designed to engage questions surrounding this interdependent evolutionary path. How might we develop criteria for a design capable of supporting a large range of collective intelligence phenomena in an integrated way? Will the emergent socio-economic life forms be strong enough to balance the destructive power of our global crises if and when "the perfect storm" hits? When everything goes worse and worse, and better and better, at the same time, and they do it faster and faster, how do we deal with the ensuing chaos? In order to bring forth desirable futures, we must be ready to navigate through it, using a twin path of collective intelligence and collective leadership. This is our global challenge. This paper is the first in that will delve into the topic more deeply, expanding certain sections of this overall expose into separate albeit inter-related lines of inquiry.