Posted by Yogesh Malhotra on April 17, 1998 at 17:51:10:

In Reply to: Re: Information, Knowledge & Wisdom: addition to constructs posted by Jay Reay on April 14, 1998 at 18:15:00:

Jay, you have indeed raised some very interesting points.

You have mentioned that: "wisdom" per se may not have a place in the management of knowledge in a business context. Your point perhaps depicts a vivid picture of companies that often focus on immediate short-term gains without necessarily paying attention to the long-term 'core' issues. You have observed that 'wisdom' also includes:

self-knowing, "understanding" situations, "empathy" with others, all of which in a spiritual context could be termed enlightenment, which I would not demean by inclusion into the business context.

One may ponder for a moment about the import of the issue pointed above by you. The implications for the 'KM paradox' surface: Can the 'talk' about the 'intellectual assets,' 'intangible assets,' 'human capital,' and so forth deliver upon the charter of Knowledge Management without giving due consideration to issues that you have mentioned above? More specifically, can the charter of Knowledge Management be met without paying attention to human and societal aspects?

Perhaps not, as suggested by some thinkers and doers [such as Arie de Gaus in 'Living Company.'] Given a systems thinking framework, wouldn't the presence of such 'enlightenment' feed into and feed upon 'Knowledge Management' (at least the flavor of KM that we have discussed on this forum - which includes issues such as 'trust,' 'motivation,' 'sharing,' 'community' and so forth...)? Within the same framework, wouldn't the presence of 'enlightenment' be a prerequisite for leveraging the innovation and creativity latent in the 'intangible assets' - at least for maintaining the 'loop' over the long run? What would keep the 'intangible assets' from walking out of the door assuming that organizations need to focus beyond monetary incentives and rewards to keep those 'gray cells' actively deployed?

Your distinction between sentient knowledge ["of which I believe the purely human attributes of understanding, intuition and inspirational connection are part"] and informational knowledge ["based on experience of the world, and data/info from external sources, which many animals display"] seems to strike a chord given my [developing] understanding of the distinction between 'processing of information' and 'sharing / construction of meaning.' Many linguistic- or information-processing theories seem to fall short in developing a rich understanding of the latter - which seems to depend more on sentience than on 'processing' of data. Your notion of sentience also seems in accord with theories in psychology that help us understand 'how humans create meaning' and how they 'share meaning.' It also seems in line with extant theory and research on the role of issues such as personal commitment and intrinsic motivation in the adoption of innovations: such issues seem to have implications for enabling development, sustenance and long-term retention of intellectual assets.

[If you prefer, you may e-mail your seminar graphic as a .gif file and I can load it for you or you may provide a link to it in the 'Image URL' input when you submit your response.]

- Yogesh

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Wisdom & Enlightenment in Knowledge Management? Charlie Jackson 09:51:02 5/05/98 (1)
  • Re: Wisdom & Enlightenment in Knowledge Management? Bruce Gold 15:06:56 10/05/98 (0)

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