theorywatch

Hmm, this couldn’t be more timely.

University of San Francisco Professor Steve Alter’s typology of the “dark side” of KM (presented at the 2006 ICSS in Hawaii) is a fascinating reversal of Michael Zack’s framework for managing codified knowledge. Some of the examples, though, seem to have only a tenuous relationship to his suggested categories, and I’d like to see someone do more in this area. (And perhaps tie it to Peter Galison’s work on secrecy: “Removing Knowledge.”)

But what I really love is Alter’s Work System Press!

Very interesting piece in Current Sociology called “Assumptions, Assertions and the Need for Evidence: Debugging Debates about Knowledge Workers” by Darr and Warhurst on the different theoretical perspectives from sociological and business literature on so-called “knowledge workers.”

It’s made even more interesting by the thought that someone who knows these literatures better than I do could probably guess most of their argument without actually reading the piece simply by viewing the citation map that Sage Journals Online now includes with its journal articles. (The rest of us should read the article, as it makes some excellent points about the satanic mills of knowledge management.)

Can’t resist the title of this provocative discussion over at Green Chameleon…..

Had the pleasure of attending an informal talk yesterday at the Schusterman Center where Dr. Max Manwaring of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, best known for his so-called “Manwaring Paradigm” regarding “small wars” and other forms of low-intensity conflict, spoke about all the intelligence difficulties surrounding the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran, related military knowledge management problems (and, yes, he notes that hierarchical managerial mindsets are a huge part of the difficulty, at just about all levels of command.) Anyway, I had the opportunity to sit next to Dr. Manwaring during lunch and chat with him a bit about both “actionable intelligence” (which is my summer research project, as I’ve mentioned before) and about libraries (he recalls his time as a teaching assistant in political science based at the University of Illinois library with great fondness, by the way.) So here’s a digital library for all you wannabe defense intellectuals….

I’m thinking about some of the implications for knowledge management of this survey. So much for data hygiene!

I was sorry to hear of the untimely death at 63 of custom hot rod builder Boyd Coddington, whom I always enjoyed watching (along with his hard-charging, horseplay-prone crew of mechanics) on American Hot Rod. Now, that was a show that was basically all about KM (in both its positive and negative aspects), as Boyd’s most striking characteristics seemed to be his incredible tacit knowledge of how these cars should be built and his maddening refusal as head of his organization to foster any form of usable codified knowledge (particularly in terms of scheduling!) or learning organization culture (which seemed to be why many of his best employees eventually became so frustrated that they left to join “the competition” as represented by former Coddington employee Chip Foose)….

I missed this from Steve Fuller when it was first published in Tamara, so it’s an interesting find for my spring 5033 class reading list. (He’s not exactly Wenger’s wingman on organizational culture, but he brings up some fascinating issues about intellectual capital, even though I think most KM practitioners would argue that they aren’t nearly as influenced by Thomas Stewart, nor nearly as influential themselves, as Fuller seems to think they are!)