Message: Re: Hard Reality of 'Soft' Issues in Knowledge Management


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Re: Hard Reality of 'Soft' Issues in Knowledge Management

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Posted by Yogesh Malhotra on February 25, 1998 at 01:22:07:
In Reply to: Re: KM is an Oxymoron, but come to think of it, so is Intellectual Capital posted by Tom Sudman on February 24, 1998 at 19:36:45:
Just to provide the 'dialectical' touch that is the characteristic of @BRINT philosophy of encouraging dialog, let's add the following quote... I remember it from my early-1980s days as a factory shopfloor engineer when I read it on a huge picture of eagl es soaring in the sky. This quote provided reinforcement of thought and practice that grew from some of the readings I had done prior to that phase, specifically Dale Carnegie (How to Stop Worrying and Start Living), Napolean Hill (You Can Work Your Own M iracles), and Samuel Smiles (Self Help). Most of my ongoing field research on human innovation and motivation develops further on those more informal introductions of the earlier days. Some of those aspects are also visible in the operationalization of th e @BRINT web site and our KM view that strives to understand and develop the synergy between the capabilities of humans and capacities of information and communication technologies. Without further ado, here is that quo te:

You Can If You Think You Can...
Hence, the synthesis of the two quotes would result into:

..Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change...
Courage to change the things I can ...
Faith to believe I can if I think I can...
and Wisdom to know the difference...
Hence a large part may be summed up into words such as Serenity, Courage, Faith, Belief and Wisdom... about "making a difference" (agreed ... I have stretched the 'difference' in a different direction). Such constructs that are difficult to grasp and measure may have some of the strongest influences for issues such as Vision, Mission, Strategy, Competence and so forth that have been discuss ed on this forum under the umbrella of Knowledge Management... Such 'soft' issues may have some of the strongest influences on the realization of Knowledge Management and Knowledge Ecology, hence there is great need for developing a better understanding o f such issues... (reminds one of articles such as 'Hard Science meets Soft Science'... another take on the 'Intellectual Capital versus Knowledge Management' and 'Measurement versus Management' debate).
Here are some more nuggets from the Mine of Knowledge to tease the thinking processes for furthering dialog on above and related issues:

"A good business novel or business biography is not about business. It is about love, hate, craftsman ship, jealousy, comradeship, ambition, pleasure. These have been, and will continue to be, man's central concerns."
-- Herbert A. Simon. (1977). The New Science of Management Decision, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

"In the peri od ahead of us, more important than advances in computer design will be the advances we can make in our understanding of human information processing -- of thinking, problem solving, and decision making..."
-- Herbert A. Simon "The Future of Inf ormation Technology Processing," Management Science, 14(9), May 1968.

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Re: Hard Reality of 'Soft' Issues in Knowledge Management Tom Sudman 12:09:00 2/25/98 (0)

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