Ritengo opportuno riportare le idee di Bruce Neubauer a proposito di knowledge management:
“….Strictly speaking, it is probably not correct to refer to “knowledge management” in organizations. Knowledge is intimately wrapped up in mental processes that apparently go on in the human brain that are not understood. We each do well to control (to some degree) our own patterns of thought, much less attempt to manage the knowledge process of others. At the individual level, one possible example of “knowledge management” is to get past the common idea that others (or external events) “make us” angry (or sad, or happy). If our mental state at a given moment is composed by others or by external events, we are sadly dependent upon external conditions. We can each change our minds (manage our knowledge) and realize that we do have a capacity to interpret the stimuli we receive from our environments. Our emotions are not tied to strings that others can reach out and pull. This is not to say that we can each be immune to external events. It is to say that we can and do interpret what we perceive. We can in a sense program our minds in order to manage our own thought processes and the emotions we experience that are related to our thought processes. Cultivating patterns of thoughts that help us maintain positive attitudes and feelings is a kind of “knowledge management.”
There is a sense in which some organizations seek to control the minds of members or followers. While such efforts may fit the literal meaning of the phrase “knowledge management,” such efforts are not the meaning of knowledge management as commonly referred to in the context of businesses and corporations. Mind control is an important topic in its own right. But it is not the subject that the phrase “knowledge management” is intended to address.
Knowledge management is about making organizations of people smarter and more responsive to the environments of those organizations. In a competitive economic environment, knowledge management can help assure the survival and success of an organization. Knowledge management is about trying to design and optimize the means by which employees become aware of threats and opportunities in the environment, and communicate information with one another to help assure that the organization adapts quickly to those threats and opportunities.
In the 20th century the predominant model of organization was that of a machine — particularly an engine. In an industrial mindset, a successful organization was on that “kept on trucking.” Its value was grounded in a set of processes that people performed almost endlessly. In the 21st century, the predominant model of organization is “brain.” A brain also has processes. But a brain is different from an engine. A brain changes itself as it continues to perform its processes. The output of a brain includes the changes that it makes to its own processes. A memory is more than the storage of facts. A memory is the maintenance of an ability to perform processes. An engine does not usually modify its own processes. Knowledge management is related to the ability of modern organizations to learn from their environments and to adapt themselves to changes in the environment.
“First generation knowledge management” refers to efforts to capture information from the environment and to make it available to employees as needed for decision making. “Second generation knowledge management” refers to using that knowledge to adjust the processes of the organization in real time. The distinction between first generation knowledge management and second generation knowledge management is parallel to the distinction between single loop learning and double loop learning.
The essence of first generation knowledge management is to capture information from the environment, “clean it up” as necessary and then to do two things with it. Urgent information needs to be sent to whoever has responsibility to know it immediately. Then all of the processed information needs to be put into some kind of knowledge repository that is widely available to those who may need it, now and in the future.
Beyond these concerns is the generation of new knowledge within the organization. The generation (discovery) of new knowledge often involves the aggregation of facts and the magic of human cognition which we do not yet understand. One of the possible products of knowledge generation is the improvement of the internal processes of the organization. This is the realm of second generation knowledge management, in which the organization improves its abilities, including its ability to learn.
Those who say that knowledge cannot be managed are correct in that knowledge management is not about mind control. It is more about the facilitation of learning. It involves the creation of an organization culture that encourages and rewards the sharing of information. It is about designing information flows that do not overwhelm employees with things they do not need to know, while assuring that employees do receive what information they do need to know. Basically, MIS (management information systems) are used to set up the organization for effective knowledge management. Computer networks cannot think, but they are tools that can be designed to make it possible for employees to process knowledge effectively. Knowledge can in a sense be managed. “Knowledge facilitation” is probably more descriptive of what is really involved.”
tra qualche giorno lo commenterò!
25 people have publicly endorsed Roberto’s work 
