TABLE OF CONTENTS The science of complexity [theory] presents us with a completely different metaparadigm. Through this lens, the world of organization is seen as a system held far from equilibrium, at the edge of chaos, by the paradoxical dynamic of competition and self-organizing cooperation. In this fundamentally paradoxical world, the links between actions and their long-term outcomes is lost, and what remains predictable is the system dynamic and the archetypal behavior it produces: predictability is possible at the general level but not the specific, the opposite of the conclusion reached with the aid of [conventional management thinking].
Ralph D. Stacey
At a conference on knowledge management (KM) not too long ago, attendees could be heard grumbling about what they felt was the event s myopic obsession with technology. Document management and imaging that s all I ve seen and heard about here, one man complained. He then amplified his discontent and shared his broader disappointment with knowledge management as a whole: an idea that amounts to little more than yesterday s information technologies trotted out in today s more fashionable clothes. Point well taken.
Indeed, at the heart of most KM strategies to date can be found data warehousing, groupware, document management, imaging, and data mining. By continuing to promote that kind of narrow, technocentric brand of thinking, the nascent field of knowledge management places its own credibility at risk. Merely re-labeling yesterday s technologies in the sexy new name...
