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Toward Pragmatic
Knowledge Management Steve Cavaleri and David Fearon have been associates in the field of knowledge management for longer than they have been members of AOK, but Steve is one of our originals. Now they come together here to lead a conversation on pathways from the conventional approach of knowledge as perceived as academics to knowledge that is pragmatic and value driven. "Conventional approaches are largely
top-down and outside-in," Cavaleri writes, "while more
pragmatic approaches are largely inside-out and bottom-up."
But pragmatic knowledge does not leave theoretical knowledge
behind. They work in parallel. "Pragmatic knowledge focuses on custom-creating knowledge to address poorly understood problems or situations, while conventional knowledge is more adept at improving well-known, clearly structured, and recurring situations." That's the gist of it. To prepare for the Fearon/Cavaleri, please read on. Steven Cavaleri (left) and David Fearon (right) David Fearon David Fearon came to Central Connecticut State University in 1986. He served as Chairman of the Management and Organization Department. Dr. Fearon has developed a keen interest in how knowledge is created and enacted for productive work. His specialty in the organizational behavior of management learning is grounded in degrees in Sociology from Colby College, and Administration from Central Michigan University and the University of Connecticut, where he earned his PhD. A recipient of the University's Excellence in Teaching Award, Dr. Fearon's courses, workshops and consultations are organized as on-going experimental designs to test teaching and learning practices that enhance reflective, pragmatic knowledge creation. Courses in innovation, quality, knowledge management, quality, strategy & operations, organizational behavior and management fundamentals also serve as primary laboratories for his published works in organizational and managerial learning behaviors. He co-edited and wrote Managing in Organizations That Learn with Steven Cavaleri (Blackwell, 1996). Coming out in July 2005 was Fearon and Cavaleri's Inside Knowledge: Rediscovering the Source of Performance Improvement. (ASQ Quality Press). Soon to be published is a chapter in Educating Managers with Real World Projects (Information Age, 2005) entitled "A Management Education Model for Bridging the Academic and Real Worlds" with Eugene Baten and Cheryl Harrison. This later research stems from his long-term role as Business Professor in Residence in Healthcare at Hospital for Special Care developing a work-based management education program for operational managers using the hospital's strategic plan to frame the action-learning curriculum. Prior to coming to CCSU, Professor Fearon taught at the University of Hartford, Colby College, and the University of Southern Maine. Dr. Fearon was Dean of Public Service at the University of Maine at Farmington and Director of the University System-wide Health Education Resource Centers, originating roles to also spearhead collegiate outreach by Three Rivers Community College and Eastern Connecticut State University. Steven Cavaleri Steven Cavaleri is an author, educator, and consultant in the fields of systems thinking, knowledge management and organizational learning. Dr. Cavaleri has twenty-five years of university teaching experience and has consulted for organizations such as, Dow-Jones, IBM, Stanley Tools and Stanley Access Technologies. He formerly worked in marketing positions for ConAgra Foods and then, a division of Dow Jones known as Irwin Publishing (now McGraw-Hill/Irwin). Steven is past Editor of the British journal The Learning Organization. He is also former president of The Knowledge Management Consortium International (www.kmci.org), and is currently Senior Vice President of the Center for the Open Enterprise. Dr. Cavaleri was formerly a Visiting Scholar in the System Dynamics Group at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Steve is a Certified Systems Integrator by the Institute of Industrial Engineers, and also a Certified Knowledge Manager. He holds a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where his research focused on training managers to use algorithms and heuristics for dealing with problems posed by technological complexity. He has published over thirty scholarly papers and articles on topics ranging from system dynamics to organizational learning. Dr. Cavaleri has also co- authored an award-winning book on systems thinking and another on managing learning organizations. Steven is also a Visiting Scholar with the Atlantic Corridor Project, a consortium among the U.S., Canada, and The European Union. Journey to a More Practical Kind of
Knowledge Evolving Knowledge Management During my days as an employee of Dow-Jones and ConAgra foods, in the 1970s, any discussions about knowledge would usually end with the objection that knowledge is impractical. The tacit assumption underlying such discussions was that knowledge was something that was normally associated with classrooms, universities, and research - all which held little relevance to the more operational interests of business. Two decades later, with the advent of computers, information networks, and all bevy of various supporting technologies, knowledge became defined as being nothing more than super-information that could be circulated at light speed through and around organizations. Suddenly, by 1990, knowledge had become practical in the eyes of managers. The excitement that permeated the KM world in those heady days was palpable because there was a shared anticipation that we were on the cusp of a new age that promised advances in business that had only been glimpsed before. Today, in retrospect, the way knowledge has been defined and used in organizations during the past decade is equally impractical as the way knowledge was viewed several decades earlier. The pendulum had swung over that two decade period, and knowledge had become atomized, sliced, and diced in a Newtonian, reductionist, way that was predicated on the view that knowledge could be dissected into its prime elements without losing anything in the process. The obvious benefit of doing so, was that organizations could not, with the aid of computers, move knowledge quickly and efficiently. It was also discovered around this time that the workforce of most companies had shifted away from being mainly skilled laborers to being populated by well-educated employees who possessed much knowledge. In fact, this previously untapped knowledge was viewed as being a valuable asset that could be transported easily around companies for the mutual benefit of all. The credo was that it would clearly be a step in the right direction if more people knew what the brightest or most capable people already seemed to know. While this approach appears to have as much validity as drilling for oil, as well as finding natural gas, and deciding to ship it all around the country via an extensive network of pipelines. Obviously, the bloom on this rose has faded over time, and there is a growing realization that there is more to knowledge than information and best practices. A More Practical View of Knowledge On the other hand, there is evidence that certain kinds of knowledge hold the potential for helping employees in organizations to accomplish far more than they are today. One type of such super-knowledge was first discovered over a century ago by scientist Charles Sanders Peirce's part of his overall approach known as Pragmaticism. Peirce was particularly interested in how both knowledge and reasoning influenced the performance of scientists in their quest for making new discoveries. Peirce proposed an elegant approach that could be used to use knowledge to help people act in ways that are more pragmatic. When we are acting pragmatically, we are considering the effects of our actions on the ability to achieve our goals reliably well. Peirce discovered that many scientists of his time had great difficulty in acting pragmatically because their beliefs about how things actually work were governed more by their own preconceived notions than on the evidence of how things actually work in practice. When they learned to modify their explanations of how things work in practice to be more closely aligned with how things actually work than with what appears to make sense to them they were able to create more valid theories and take effective actions more reliably. Today, businesses suffer from rampant ineffectiveness, yet their attention is almost always directed toward curing glaring inefficiencies. Conventional knowledge is useful to stem the tide of inefficiency, yet it provides little of value for dealing with the chronic problems of organizational ineffectiveness. Pragmatic knowledge holds the potential for increasing organizational effectiveness as its use becomes increasingly widespread through an organization. This set of AOK dialogues will address how companies can get the types of knowledge they need most to address the problems of greatest concern and take advantage of the most promising opportunities. Toward Pragmatic Organizations
Fearon, D. and Cavaleri, S. (2005). Inside Knowledge: Rediscovering the Source of Performance Improvement, Milwaukee, WI, ASQ Quality Press |
Preparing for Conversations
with David Fearon and Steven Cavaleri
Introduction