Posted by Rene-Marc Mangin on October 13, 1997 at 17:22:00:

In Reply to: Knowledge as a social construct posted by Denham on July 14, 1997 at 14:22:26:

As a symbolic interactionist, I subscribe to the idea that knowledge is a social construct because knowledge connotes meaning and we believe that meaning is developed through social interaction. As a profesional mediator who for years specialized in multi-party science-intensive disputes, I have experience facilitating the creation of knowledge between scientists and others in the pursuit of settlements. There are methods for exploring problem situations and potentially surfacing the fundamental assumptions of parties or getting them to reveal their mental models, but knowing the tools doesn't necessarily translate into success in facilitating the integration of knowledge. Watching trained mediators stumble through mediations has made clear the difference between intellectually grasping a process and being able to use it effectively. For me it turns out that my under-graduate "side"-major, cultural anthropology made the difference in ,y ability to mediate science-intensive problems. I am a "recovering" pesticide toxicologist. I switched fields just before my prelims and started studying systems science via planning and mediation to understand the mechanics of facilitating knowledge work. I later found that the "art" in facilitation came in applying cultural anthropological thinking to the identification and appreciation of different mental models or worldviews. After studying organizational and speech communications (particularly, discourse and conversation analysis), I found that non-verbal behavior had the most impact on group dynamics in terms of addressing issues of safety and trust. Both of these conditions are, I believe important for facilitating high-quality knowledge work in face-to-face interactions--the "richest" form of social interaction. I don't advocate that everyone studies all of these subjects, but I do think that facilitating knowledge work, at least in terms of human communications, requires the integration of information and skills from these fields. I have developed a couple of models that seem to help people to be systematic in the facilitation of knowledge work. My partner and I are currently putting them in manuscript form. It is difficult to discuss the intangible qualities that seem to have so much impact on the creation of knowledge. The manuscript is not complete so I cannot send it out, but if you are interested in my thoughts about knowledge work and project-based management, I believe you could obtain a cassette of the talk I gave at the Project Management Institute's annual conference in Chicago last month. It was titled "Project Horizons: A Perspective for Project Management in the 21st Century." Steven Price was listed as the main author since he is a member of PMI, but I composed the bulk of the talk. There was also an article in the proceedings, but I don't recommend it for two reasons. First, PMI published what was essentially a rough draft; and second, the presentation was significcantly different.

Rene-Marc Mangin, Ph.D.

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