Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2005
Knowledge Management and the Design of Distributed Cognition Systems Sandra M. Richardson University of Central Florida
[email protected] Abstract The society in which we live today is increasingly a knowledge society. Organizations are turning more and more to knowledge creation and management for the development of their competitive edge and organizational strategies. This must be taken into account when designing information technology to support organizational knowledge operations. Through the use of philosophy, we examine the role of knowledge management in the design of distributed cognition systems. The design principles proposed by Boland, et al. (1994), are modified with the addition of Habermas’s theory of communicative action. The resulting design principles are proposed as a framework for the design of information technology that supports distributed cognition and knowledge management in organizations.
1. Introduction It is widely observed that the society we live in today is increasingly a “knowledge society” [27,18,4,38] and as such organizations find themselves turning to organizational learning [22,34], knowledge creation, and knowledge management [1] for decisions regarding organizational strategy [28,19,37,21,35]. It is this knowledge based strategic action that provides a competitive advantage for organizations [31,3]. Given this situation organizational cognition, learning, knowledge creation and management are increasingly important [36]. Cognition in an organization is a distributed phenomenon in which individuals reflect upon their experiences, make plans and take action [8, 26]. Distributed cognition is defined as the process whereby individuals make interpretations of their situation and exchange them with others with whom they have interdependencies so that each may act with an understanding of their own situation as well as that of others. Organizational cognition and the resulting collective knowledge is created by individuals within an organization who devise, interpret and test understandings [8]. It is the combined efforts of these individuals, through interpretation and communication, in a social or organizational setting that produces unique organizational knowledge that provides a competitive advantage [29]. Lee, et al. [23 p. 23] state that “Learning occurs as organizational actions lead to environmental responses, which are interpreted by individuals who share their
interpretations and form a collective organizational action-response map based on cause-effect relationships.” They develop a system called COCOMAP which uses cognitive mapping and Churchman’s [13] Hegelian inquiring system to represent individual world views, and describe formal structural and relational join operations for integrating individual maps into a collective map. Boland, Ramkrishnan, and Te’eni [8] go beyond Lee, et. al, and propose design principles for organizational learning systems, based on the concept of distributed cognition, to guide the development of information technology. Hermeneutics combined with inquiring systems [13], and cognitive mapping, serves as the foundation for the development of these design principles (see Richardson & Courtney [33] for an alternative approach to using Churchman’s inquirers as the basis of design principles for knowledge management systems). They describe a system called Spider based on these principles. In the Spider approach, hermeneutics is the mechanism through which individuals share their unique interpretations of a given situation. It is proposed here that hermeneutics alone is insufficient to support the communication function effectively in environments such as those of COCOMAP and Spider, and a third philosophy, Habermas’s [20] theory of communicative action, may be used to enhance the processes of distributed cognition and organizational learning. The integration of Habermas with the Boland, et al. design principles for distributed cognition, and COCOMAP’s procedures for map integration results in a stronger model of communication and distributed cognition and more closely integrates hermeneutics with inquiring systems and a more robust design theory for organizational learning and knowledge management systems. Walls, et. al [39] state that a design theory is a prescriptive theory based on theoretical underpinnings which says how a design process can be carried out in a way which is both effective and feasible. The benefit of an IS design theory is to articulate the boundaries within which specific design assumptions apply [39]. IS design theories make design processes more tractable for system developers by focusing their attention and restricting their options, resulting in improved outcomes [25]. The purpose of this paper is to integrate Habermas’s theory of communicative action into Boland, et al.’s design principles for distributed cognition to define the elements of a system that would go beyond COCOMAP and Spider. The paper will be structured as
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follows. First, the concept of distributed cognition will be discussed. In that discussion Boland, et al’s design principles for distributed cognition will be summarized. In the next section a set of revised design principles is introduced. And lastly a discussion section is given.
2. Knowledge Management Organizations currently engage in knowledge management to develop core competencies, increase competitiveness, and as the basis for strategy [28,19,37,36]. Core competencies evolve from collective learning in an organization; their development involves the harmonizing of streams of technology, organization of work, and delivery of value [31]. Core competence is communication, involvement and deep commitment to working across organizational boundaries; it involves many levels of people and all functions. Core competence does not diminish with use as do physical assets; rather it is enhanced as it is applied and shared. However this knowledge and competence needs to be nurtured and protected; knowledge fades if it is not used [31]. Competencies are the glue that binds existing businesses; they are the engines that drive new business development [31]. Knowledge management involves more than just technology for facilitating knowledge sharing. Practitioners realize that people and the culture of the workplace are driving factors that ultimately determine the success or failure of knowledge management initiatives [35]. While knowledge is often viewed as the property of individuals, such as under the lens of hermeneutics, it can be recognized that a great deal of knowledge is both produced and held collectively. It is generated through people working together in an organization and is heavily social in character [10]. The importance of people as creators and carriers of knowledge is forcing organizations to realize that knowledge lies less in its databases than in the people within the organization [10,11]. Therefore communication as a means for sharing knowledge within an organization and its knowledge management systems is critical. Effective communication is the only way to share and combine the knowledge carried by the organization’s individual members and contribute to the creation of knew knowledge, core competencies and the development of sustained strategic advantages [3]. If an organization is to thrive, be innovative, and develop successful new products or services, it must understand the processes of learning within the organization. It must also develop ways to efficiently and effectively manage the knowledge the organization creates in order to survive and grow. Distributed cognition is one way to approach knowledge creation and management in an organization. In the next section distributed cognition will be presented, followed by a
discussion of Boland, et al.’s [8] concepts of distributed cognition.
3. Distributed Cognition Distributed cognition is the process whereby individuals, who act autonomously within a decision domain, make interpretations of their situation and exchange them with others with whom they have interdependencies so that each may act with an understanding of their own situation and others [8]. It treats thinking not as an action that takes place wholly inside an individual’s head, but rather as an activity that is distributed among the individual, other people, the physical environment, and the tools the person uses, including language [41]. Distributed cognition is collaboration. It includes the thinking that people accomplish in conjunction with material resources such as calculators, calendars, computers, to-do lists, and documents, which can be loosely classified as tools. It is more than just different people accomplishing different parts of a task but rather acting in concert to accomplish a kind of cognition that no individual could achieve separately [41]. When distributed cognition works well, the manager’s individual actions take each other and their interdependencies into account in a way that yields a coordinated outcome; this requires a process of surfacing and examining individual assumptions and understanding [8]. Information technology can support distributed cognition by enabling individuals to make rich representations of their understanding, reflect upon those representations, engage in dialog about them with others and use them to inform members of an organization leading to some type of action [8]. Information technology can support an iterative process for an individual, which includes and utilizes the uniqueness of individuals and their worldviews. Communication of knowledge within an organization between and among individuals may be supported by information technology. New ideas can be swept in from the outside to “complicate thinking” [8]. Introducing new ideas from outside an individual’s frame of reference will allow for richer reflection, knowledge creation, and more meaningful action. Managers have a tendency to operate on increasingly impoverished views of the world [40]. Organizations seldom have mechanisms for generating new structures that help to complicate the thinking which leads to learning and innovation. The inclusion of these structures is necessary as they can help change understandings that are not as efficient or effective as they could be [8]. Understanding comes from disruption of the familiar, or in looking at an issue at a different level. To date systems design has been lacking in the creation of features that will facilitate the questioning of assumptions
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and understanding, encourage reflection, and encourage the disruption of current thinking within an organization through open and validated communication. Boland, et al. [8] bring to light the fact that historically much of the effort to design information technology to support cognition in organizations has not recognized its distributed quality. Instead, systems development has tended to focus on the individual as an isolated decision maker, or on the group as a producer of a decision. They argue cognition in organizations is a distributed phenomenon. The process is one in which individual members of the organization reflect upon personal experiences, create interpretations, and take action. Interpretations are owned by individuals; however, coordinated outcomes emerge in organizations when individuals think and act in ways that take others and their interdependencies into account. Hermeneutics is offered as the mechanism for bringing interpretations into the ongoing day-to-day sense-making dialog in an organization. It is the means for bringing together the unique ideas of individuals, sharing those ideas and coming to a deeper understanding, thereby creating unique organizational knowledge. Inquiring systems [13] are used as a way to judge the validity, limits, and goals of the interpretations. This provides a theory to examine the ways in which a community of inquirers build and test representations of individual interpretations through dialog. Applications of information technology that embody these design principles (described later) support distributed cognition by assisting individuals in creating interpretations, reflecting on them, and entering into dialog with others in the organization. The objective is to refine their own understanding of a situation and better appreciate the understandings of others, enabling individuals to take interdependencies into account in their own actions. It is proposed here that the ideas of hermeneutics applied by Boland, et al. as the mechanism for communication is not adequate for validating and communicating interpretations for the purpose of creating organizational knowledge. The interpretations exchanged by means of the hermeneutic process can be distorted within the organizational setting. The inclusion of Habermas’s [20] theory of communicative action as a mechanism for communication provides a means for open communication and validation of a collection of interpretations. Inherent in hermeneutically grounded investigations there is little critique of the objective, motivations, and outcome associated with individuals, institutions, and societies in which they operate. Habermas’s ideas provide a mechanism for this critique. In the following section, Habermas’s theory of communicative action will be described so that these concepts can later be applied to the development of new design principles for distributed cognition.
4. The Theory of Communicative Action The roots of Habermas’s [20] theory of communicative action are found in the school of “critical theory;” a research school that originally sought to study Kantian conditions for reason and knowledge within a Marxist environment. He articulates a complex political, social, and epistemological critical theory to study the nature of the causation of social problems and social action [5]. He proposes that people have a “technical interest in knowing and controlling the world around them, an interest in removing distortions in our understanding of ourselves, and an interest in being able to understand each other and join in common activity” [5]. Habermas identifies a communicative element in knowledge creation, affected by the relationships among people. Rather than articulating precise observable behaviors he collects these forces and behaviors of individuals in society into a “lifeworld.” A lifeworld holds a society or organization’s cultural norms, identifies forms of communication and patterns of interpretation for use in interpretive efforts [5]. There are three cultural spheres within the lifeworld in which learning, cognition and institutional practice take place; the objective sphere, the inter-subjective sphere and the subjective sphere [30]. The objective sphere is where facts that are independent of human thought reside. The inter-subjective sphere includes the combination of personal experiences and those facts that are independent of the person reside. And, lastly the subjective sphere is where personal or private experiences reside. The goal for any person in a communicative process is to differentiate between the three spheres, to step outside of their perspective and achieve a “decentered” understanding of the lifeworld. It is here, where one can transcend personal needs and societal norms, where one can consider moral problems abstractly, and distinguish matters of truth, justice, and taste according to the objective, social, and subjective views [5]. Communicative action is communication, through language or other symbolic sign systems, in which actors participate in order to understand another actor or communicative partner [24]. Communication is oriented toward norms that define the expectations of the communicative partners. It is when the norms can no longer be agreed upon or recognized that discursive action begins. New ground rules are implied, specifically the acceptance of the “validity claims” by all members of the communicative action process. Habermas describes an environment, the “ideal speech situation,” for discursive action. Discursive action is action that tries to discover and weigh up the arguments proposed for or against a message in terms of its clarity, truthfulness, correctness, and appropriateness. These four criteria define “validity claims” and discursive action is aimed at justifying any or
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all of these claims [24]. Anyone at anytime can “cash in” on these validity claims, each speaker is free to investigate the claims of another [5]. The redemption of validity claims makes discourse a vehicle for reflective learning and criticism which helps free the participants from inner compulsions, biases, prejudices, and false beliefs [24]. Acceptance of the ground rules of communicative action, specifically the existence of validity claims, permits criticism of organizational processes that do not conform to these rules [24]. This process lends itself to verification of the information communicated by individuals within the distributed cognition process. The verification of individual perceptions provided to the system under the hermeneutic process in order to develop new organizational knowledge lends itself to the creation of a system guarantor called for in Churchman’s [13] inquiring systems, in “inquiring organizations” based on those systems [15,33,14). The ideal speech situation is not meant to be a communicative effort to reduce uncertainty or produce knowledge but rather one that “motivates participants in their own emancipation and through which different evaluative criteria can be used by the decentered speakerhearer, depending on the type of claim;” it is an environment of mutual understanding, where distortions are minimized [9,5]. A problem arises when one component of the lifeworld takes over, resulting in an unequal shift in power. “When speakers, embedded in a lifeworld, attempt to speak about, or otherwise share, knowledge that is scientific in the usual sense, then they must filter out themselves in order to create an objective, normatively neutral attitude creating filtered or objectified knowledge in relation to the interwoven view of life” [5]. When this cannot be achieved then one lifeworld can take over another. For example when technical interests such as the domain of empirical-analytic science which seeks prediction and control, testing knowledge claims take over practical interests such as those which seek understanding rather than prediction and control, an unequal shift in the balance of power will take place. When science and technology become the leading productive force institutionalized within society, the institutionalized forces will take on a life of its own and the development of the social system will be determined by the logic of the scientific-technical progress [6]. As a result the culturally defined self-understanding of a social life world is replaced by the self-reification of people under the categories of purposive-rational action and adaptive behavior [20]. The public realm loses its function as a political force for dissemination of different ideas and a place to discuss social issues and their impact. And, instead becomes a place for alternative sets of leaders of administrative personnel. This is a poor replacement for communicative action in the public realm [6]. Habermas also discusses the emancipatory potential
of discursive action in which individuals can bring ideas into the discourse and combat the domination of technical interests. The focus here is on a subjective, voluntary empowering action of individual members of society in bringing out individual, and thus social, emancipation [16,17]. In the following section, we describe the original core elements and design principles of Boland, et al. and show how the theory of communicative action can be used to make for more robust communication mechanisms in the context of distributed cognition.
5. Design Principles for Distributed Cognition It is argued here that the bridge between hermeneutics and inquiring systems has several missing links. The first being, the communication that takes place through hermeneutics does not have a mechanism for validation. The hermeneutic process involves an individual operating in a social context. In an organizational setting a group of individuals provides their unique interpretations of a situation for discussion. Each member of the group considers the interpretations of the other individuals, as well as their own. The result of these considerations is an understanding of each individual’s unique perception as well as an understanding of the perceptions of others within the organization. The result is a group “perception” with all of the members acting with a common understanding of any given issue or context. Through this process layers of meaning and understanding are built, richer knowledge for each individual is developed, and the creation of a group understanding resulting in the emergence of unique organizational knowledge. A mechanism for validation is lacking in the hermeneutic process. While inquiring systems have a guarantor, the original design principles for distributed cognition fail to consider validation as part of the knowledge creation process. Each individual must have an understanding of the presuppositions of the others interpretations in order to obtain an accurate understanding. This cannot be achieved through the hermeneutic process. However, Habermas’s validity claims and understanding of the lifeworlds provides this mechanism for validated communication. An understanding of the lifeworlds allows for interpretations to fuse together and provides a forum for reaching a group understanding in which “participants agree upon or discuss something in one objective world, in their common social world, or in a given subjective world” [20. p.131]. Through the mechanisms of validity claims the interpreter understands the meaning of an interpretation “only to the extent that he sees why the author felt himself
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entitled to put forward (as true) certain assertions, to recognize (as right) certain values and norms, to express (as sincere) certain experiences” [20 p.132]. In other words, an individual can truly only understand the meanings of the interpretations within discursive action if he or she is aware of the validity claims. The prejudices that are brought to the group discussion by each individual cannot be identified unless they are at least implicitly taking a position on validity claims connected with the interpretation [20 p. 132]. Therefore the ideas of Habermas add to distributed cognition a mechanism for clarifying and understanding the interpretations of others, and for validating the interpretations through an understanding of the lifeworlds and validity claims. This ensures that the collective organizational knowledge that emerges from discourse and enters into the inquiring system is valid. The second link added by including Habermas’s ideas is a mechanism for critique of the objectives, motives, and outcomes associated with individuals in the organization. Within an organization, strategic communication can dominate discourse. Strategic communication and action is that which is designed to convince or manipulate others into accepting one’s predetermined position [16]. The strategic decisions of an organization are often impacted by such “directed” action. Discursive communication through validity claims allows for the uncovering of these actions. The third link is established with the addition of discursive action as a mechanism for a guarantor as required by inquiring systems. Validated communication allows for corroborated knowledge to enter into the inquiring system. The notion of a guarantor provides the user of the information or knowledge system with confidence that the system provides validated or correct knowledge.
5.1 Core Elements of Distributed Cognition Boland, et al. describe three core elements of distributed cognition: actors, interpretations, and actions. To this, we add a fourth, communication, based on the theory of communicative action. They also describe 6 design principles. We revise each of these in light of the need for discourse based on the theory of communicative action. The original and revised core elements and design principles are described below. 5.1.1. Actors. Boland, et al. state that a system is oriented toward an individual person, and not a group, because only an individual can have a hermeneutic understanding and meaning to represent. It is the individual in dialog with others that is the locus of the inquiring system. Their original element is described as: The system is oriented toward an individual because only
an individual can have a hermeneutic understanding and meaning to represent. The addition of Habermas’s provides the communication link between the individual and the organization, bringing the individual into a social process through discursive communication. This is a necessary link since the goal in an organizational context is to merge the unique ideas of individuals through open and validated communication, resulting in the creation of unique organizational knowledge, to act as input into the inquiring system. Therefore a mechanism to bring the individual into a social context is required and provided by discursive communication. As a result the system is oriented toward an individual operating within a social context through discursive communication. Our revised description is: The system is oriented toward an individual operating within a social context through discursive communication. The result is merging individual interpretations into organizational knowledge.
5.1.2. Interpretations. Boland, et al. state that the system is oriented toward an actor’s interpretation of his or her situation taken as an integral, whole unit of understanding. Under this assumption hermeneutic inquiry is a process of continuously elaborating and questioning levels of text and context. Moving through these levels is the mechanism that provides a greater understanding of one’s own interpretation and that of others. The original description of interpretations is: The system is oriented toward an actors’ interpretation of his or her situation taken as an integral part of a whole. Habermas adds to this element a mechanism for open communication and validity for individual interpretations. Under this view the system is oriented toward an individual operating within a social context through discursive communication. Validity claims offer a mechanism to validate the individual interpretations. It is more than just moving through layers of understanding and questioning since the interpretations are validated through discourse. Our revised description is: The system is oriented toward an individual operating within a social context through discursive communication, which provides a mechanism that validates each individual’s interpretations. 5.1.3. Action. Boland, et al. state that the system is oriented toward the actions that punctuate the ongoing process of distributed cognition. This is accomplished through a cyclical process of review of interpretations resulting in modification of those interpretations. The original description of action is: The system is oriented toward the actions that punctuate the ongoing process of distributed cognition. Inherent in hermeneutics is little critique of the objectives, motivations, and outcomes associated with
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individuals within the organization. “Communication will be said to be disturbed when (some of) the presuppositions of direct understanding between (at least) two participants in an interactions are not satisfied” [20, p. 131]. Having an understanding of the lifeworlds provides the mechanism for understanding among members of the group. This understanding can provide the knowledge for the inquiring system, which is goal oriented and uses knowledge as “potential” for action. Thus our revised description is: Through discursive communication understanding between group members can provide the knowledge for the inquiring system, which has the goal of using knowledge as “potential” for action. 5.1.4. Communication: A New Element. To the three original elements described above, we add a fourth, communication. Boland, et al. refer to communication as the locus of the system; however, they do not provide an element of communication in their set of design principles. Distributed cognition is a means for fusing together the interpretation of individuals and as a result producing unique collective organizational knowledge, and managing that knowledge within an organization. Communication is a vital element in this process and including it as a core element is required. This addition is accomplished through discursive communication, which provides the mechanism for open, validated communication, in an organization. Thus the description of this element is: Through discursive communication the system provides the means for validating and fusing together the interpretations, producing collective organizational knowledge.
creating new organizational knowledge based on the interpretations of its individuals. Also provided by discursive action, through the validity claims, is the notion of a guarantor. The guarantor provides confidence in the system that the owner of the interpretations, also acting as the user of the system, is able to truly believe these representations. The revised design principle is: Discursive communication provides the mechanism for moving interpretations owned by individuals into a social context, this is necessary for creating organizational knowledge. 5.2.2. Easy Travel. Boland, et al. state that an individual’s interpretation should display a hypertext like structure in which elements can be linked together, and the links can be followed quickly and easily. Easy travel is required by both hermeneutics and inquiring systems as this is the quality of the system that most directly supports the hermeneutic process, allowing actors to move back and forth from overviews to underlying assumptions. The original design principle for easy travel is: An individual’s interpretation should display a hypertext like structure in which any element can be linked together and followed quickly and easily. Habermas adds direction as the information from this movement becomes too complex to navigate. With hermeneutics there is no sense of critique, as the layers of interpretations grow, direction and goals can get lost. Habermas adds a mechanism to provide this direction, and validate the volumes of information that result from the easy travel of knowledge in the system. Our revised design principle is: Discursive communication provides a mechanism to provide direction, and validate the volumes of information that result from easy travel within the hypertext system.
5.2 Original and Revised Design Principles The six design principles for distributed cognition systems involve ownership, mobility, multiplicity, indeterminacy, emergence and mixed forms of interpretations, as described next. 5.2.1. Ownership. Boland, et al. state that an interpretation is always owned by an actor who is responsible for creating and maintaining it; including the responsibility of sharing any part of the representations. An interpretation must belong to an individual if it is to give access to his or her context of understanding. They state that dialog or dialectic among different underlying images of the world requires an owner who truly believes them. The original design principle is: An interpretation is always owned by an actor who is responsible for creating and maintaining it. The addition of discursive communication here brings in the mechanism for moving interpretations owned by an individual into the social context. This is necessary for
5.2.3. Multiplicity. Boland, et al. state that each actor involved in distributed cognition should make his or her own interpretations and be able to participate in the exchange and critique of representations. Communication takes place in order to exchange representations. The original multiplicity design principle is: Each actor should make his or her own interpretations and participate in the exchange or critique of these representations. As stated earlier, hermeneutics is not an adequate mechanism for communication in a distributed cognition system. The addition of discursive action provides a forum for open and validated communication to occur. Our revised design principle is: Discursive communication provides a forum for open and validated communication to occur – a requirement for exchange and fusion of the representations of individuals in order to form organizational knowledge. 5.2.4. Indeterminacy. Boland, et al. state that interpretations are not required to be comprehensive,
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complete, or precise. From a hermeneutic perspective there is not final understanding. They also state that inherent in the Singerian process is always a partial or limited understanding because of the continuing “sweeping in” of more context. Their original design principle: Interpretations are not required to be complete, comprehensive, or precise. They are not a final understanding. Indeterminacy as a design principle explicitly leaves room for conversation from separate views. And, discursive action provides the mechanism for open and validated communication. Our revised design principle: Indeterminacy explicitly leaves room for conversation from separate views and discursive action provides the mechanism for open and validated communication. 5.2.5. Emergence. Boland, et al. state that more abstract constructs and concepts will be developed during the process of interpretation as ideas are fused together. Inquiry should alternate between complicating and simplifying an interpretation. The original design principle for emergence: Abstract concepts will be developed during the process of interpretation as ideas are fused together. Discursive communication provides the forum for bringing together the interpretations of individuals and validates them. Continued communication can allow for new ideas to be introduced, or further discussion of existing ideas for additional refinement. As a result of fusing together validated interpretations through communication is the emergence of new collective or organizational knowledge. Our revised design principle: Discursive communication provides the forum for bringing together the interpretations of individuals and validates them, as a result interpretations are fused together and new organizational knowledge emerges. 5.2.6. Mixed Form. Boland, et al. state that actors sometimes have radically different forms of expressing their understandings, ranging from text to pictures and graphs. The original design principle for mixed form: Actors have radically different forms of expressing their understandings, ranging from text to pictures and graphs. The addition of Habermas’s ideas provides a mechanism, through validity claims, to ensure that the actors are communicating accurately with each other. This is especially important if they are using different forms of expressing their understandings. The revised principle: Discursive communication provides a mechanism, through validity claims, to ensure that actors are communicating accurately with each other, this is especially important if they are using different forms of expressing their understanding.
5.3. Implementing the Revised Principles
Both Lee, et al. (in system called COCOMAP) and Boland, et al. (in Spider) use cognitive mapping as a way of implementing their models of organizational learning and distributed cognition. Cognitive maps[2] are diagrams that show causal relationships that are believed to exist among “concept variables” in a problem domain. To validate and experiment with the revised design principles, a new version of COCOMAP is being designed. This system, DISCOMAP, will employ discursive communication as described above, and will use the fuzzy mapping approach employed in COCOMAP, and will use the relational join approach described in Lee, et al. [23] to merge individual maps in to collective maps. Space limitations prohibit further discussion of this design here.
6. Discussion Throughout the discussion in this paper it has been proposed that information technology designed to support knowledge management through distributed cognition is a useful tool in the knowledge dependent environment in which today’s organizations operate. The original design principles developed by Boland, et al. viewed hermeneutics as the mechanism for a group of individuals to exchange ideas, and inquiring systems as the mechanism of how a community of inquirers build and test knowledge representations. It has been suggested here that there are some missing links in the connection between hermeneutics and inquiring systems. The addition of Habermas’s theory of communicative action provides the links needed to bridge the two. Hermeneutics involves individuals operating in a social context, reflecting upon their experiences and creating interpretations. An individual gains a deeper understanding of a situation by sharing the individual interpretations of all of the members of an organization; but the “ownership” of the interpretation remains with the individual. With respect to knowledge creation, knowledge management and distributed cognition, the interpretations of an individual must be communicated in a way that allows for the creation of new, unique and validated knowledge within the organization. Hermeneutics alone cannot handle this process. Discursive action is introduced here as a mechanism for providing a forum for individual interpretations to enter a social or organizational setting. The validity claims provide the means for the creation of validated knowledge to enter the system, and for group or organizational knowledge to emerge. The introduction of Habermas’s theory of communicative action also provides a mechanism for the critique of a situation that is not offered through hermeneutics. Objectives, motivations, and outcomes
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associated with the organization and its individual members can be uncovered through the process of discursive action. Lastly, the notion of a guarantor in inquiring systems is supported through the validity claims. The validity claims provide a means for the user of the system to be confident in the accuracy of the knowledge the system holds. Knowledge is power [7] and the impact of knowledge provided by information systems should be examined closely. In the current environment, with organizations such as Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, and others folding due to questionable practices, examining business practices differently not only seems appropriate but necessary. Perhaps the ideas of Habermas and Churchman, which aim for socially responsible action, can be incorporated into the design of information technology, and information systems as a whole, to create some momentum for change or at least create a greater awareness of ethical and social responsibility in the corporate environment. So, it can be argued that incorporating the ideas proposed in philosophy, those that call for social responsibility and change, are not incompatible with business practices. And, while revolution is not likely to occur, changes based on these philosophies can be incorporated into organizational business systems and provide a means for small changes within the system. The use of philosophy in examining business practices may not provide the means for an overhaul of the institution of business as a whole. But it does provide the means for small changes to be incorporated in the institution, operating within the system, to provide significant change in the long run.
7. References [1] Alavi, M; and Leidner, D., “Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 25, Nol. 1, March 2001, pp. 107-136. [2] Axelrod, R., Structure of Decision: The Cognitive Maps of Political Elites, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1976. [3] Barney, J.B., “Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage,” Journal of Management, Vol. 17, pp. 99-120. [4] Bell, D. (1973), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A venture in social forecasting, New York: Basic Books.
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