Complexity, Innovation, Knowledge and Learning: A quantum interpretation of management

Information ecology: a biological view on information

Do we really need to mail around gigas and gigas of information that hardly anybody reads?  Do we have to construct huge databases that in day to day management serve very little? Or can we invent another, more ecological way of dealing with information flows.  Information ecology is a concept that already exists a while, but that has never (as far as I know) really been visualised.  One of my MSc students in France (Matthias Adler) did an interesting study, using agents, about the emergent character of information ecology.  Maybe we should call it the biology of information.  Interesting to read, and again in order not to wait for a journal publication, here is the thesis (first draft article) version

Emergence, Agents, Knowledge and Innovation

Already a while ago, one of my Masters students in the Netherlands (Cindy Jooren) submitted a very interesting thesis studying the role that knowledge management plays in improving the innovative power of a company.  Searching for emergence and networked interaction, she used agent based simulations.  She did the research in the company she worked for, and therefor it took some time before we could make it public.  In order to wait no longer for a full article publication, you already have access to the thesis version here.

Research on a more active pedagogical approach

Alain Taurisson finished his PhD (in French): An active pedagogy; a new paradigm. Though the paradigm is not really "new" (and I only refer to my own book published for instance in 2000 on that subject), it is an interesting thesis for those that read French and are interested in the subject.

Shouldn't consciousness be the number one research issue in management?

Yes of course, I would say.  And fortunately, I am not the only one to say so.  There is a growing interest outside the management area in consciousness studies (just to mention the noetic society that I have refered earlier).  There is an interesting "public library" on conciousness research: the Association for the scientific study of consciousness. I presume that what is understood by "scientific" in this association should rather be labelled "third person investigation", as the Dalai Lama calls it. I personnally doubt whether third person investigation only, will allow us to discover a typicaly first person issue.  Another "recent" source of interest is the edited book of Susan Blackmore: Conversations on consciousness; and that is really what it is.  The view of a number of state of the art researchers in the broad area of neuroscience and philosophy.

Many ideas that all have to have their impact in any social science, and hence also in management.  Is innovation a matter of consciousness and up to what level? Should we be interested in raising the consciousness level of our management (or our employees); with what purpose; how could we do this? All questions that we for easiness do not want to address, but that might contain key elements to answer the many still open questions that we encounter in management. It is not since the question is less obvious, or rather the answer is, that we can ignore the question.

In my newest book Complexity, learning and organizations: a quantum interpretation of business I try to address some of these concerns. But I would be very interested to arrive earlier or later (and rather earlier) to really launch a research program around consciousness in management.  To be continued.

French site on holism and systemic thinking

Dominique Beriot published a book "Manager par l'approche systemique" and made a site, that gives a nice overview (in French) of what systemic thinking is, giving also references to most of what is published in French and is interesting.