The functional and bureaucratized organization has used knowledge to codify it in procedures and routines, basically weighing on production needs. In highly dynamic environments, companies cannot maintain a system of coding knowledge in routines in line with the pace of change.
They need to change the organizational principles established to produce efficiently, for other organizational principles that allow constant learning and innovation. Companies organized to produce efficiently will give way to companies organized to learn and create knowledge.
The hypothesized knowledge-based company is a company that basically establishes a network relationship system where the logic of competition has been replaced - complemented by the logic of collaboration and knowledge exchange.
Organization theory
The last 30 years have changed not only the environment we investigate but also the way we investigate. Basically the Theory of the Organization has been concentrated in a functionalist current where the organization is a system that works effectively if it achieves its always explicit goals. The task of management, according to this point of view is to define and achieve these goals. The researcher must take objective data about how the organization works around these objectives while the research follows a classical scientific method.
But other theoretical approaches have appeared, some deriving from functionalism, and others challenging it. David Silverman in 1971 opened Pandora's box by putting on the table the "social construction" against "social determinism", the interpretive logic against the logic of causality, and the actors against the systems, and the plural definition of situations versus singular definition based on unique goals and objectives.
The fundamental change came with Postmodernism. The always relative object of study is not an entity with essential characteristics but a socially constructed entity. The status of the researcher is also questioned, and he is no longer an objective observer but necessarily involved. Gone are the times where you had certainties about what organizations are, the role of the researcher, the role of methodology, and the nature of theory.
Research has become conversations or dialogues, to relate organizations as empirical objects, organization as theoretical discourse, and organizing as a social process.
Researchers participate in the conversation by interpreting and representing, and always involved in a choice about what we want to represent and how we want to represent it. Researchers as readers of a reality actively interpret this reality, giving it meaning. Readers make sense of words and make their own representations.
From bureaucracy to fluidity: New organizational forms
Bureaucracy has dominated organizational studies. Weber systematized the concept of organization characterized by: Centralization, Hierarchy, Authority, Discipline, Rules and Division of work, creating the archetype of organization.
Although nobody can think that this archetype is out of date, not even its relevance, if we verify the appearance of new organizational forms in three directions
a) the end of the limits of the company and the interorganizational reality of any organization, worth the expression. The source of a company's capacity and training no longer resides exclusively within its boundaries. By maintaining, modifying and transforming relationships, organizations can build their own environment.
b) To be successful in external relationships, new internal relationships are required, and mastering the ability to innovate, and create an internal collaborative network that also includes clients, suppliers and other strategic partners. Leadership skills, team building and knowledge sharing should be traits of this internal network.
c) The hierarchy, if not eliminated, changes its significance. It is one more way to coordinate and integrate actions of different people in different space and time.
Organizational metaphors
Company managers are subjected to a constant storm of new approaches based on dozens of ways to create the structure of their companies, which reinforces the idea that we are on the edge of a chaotic system that without clearly delineating the new organizational forms begins to envision organizational forms based on a new logic and burying the bureaucratic-mechanistic system.
The question is not to give in to superficial movements and to observe at a deeper, more systemic level, to try to understand. As Heisenberg says, after all understanding is nothing more than recognizing that different phenomena are part of a coherent whole. Genuine knowledge is one that cuts through the surface of evidence to find a model.
One way of dealing with these problems is the use of metaphors to get closer to understanding organizational reality. They are new ways of "reading" a reality without forgetting that the reader rewrites the text with his interpretation, being a non-neutral agent, and ultimately the constructor of the observed reality.
To talk about knowledge in organizations we need new metaphors that replace the metaphor of the machine, typical of the industrial era. Metaphor encompasses the general image process where A is seen as B, so that under this prism we can approach complex realities and multifaceted. It is a way of thinking and seeing reality. They are images that quickly capture interest but, on the contrary, present a tremendous difficulty in being applied in practice. All management constructions have some truth but they often tend to oversimplify the complex world of the company. Perhaps we should finally accept that companies are complex systems, not as a metaphor but by accepting its true complexity.
Metaphors have the ability to capture attention, while making the organization understandable and moldable.Although we must never forget that it is the theory through which we observe the situation, which ultimately decides what we see (Einstein), without this means that there is no observable reality, it is revealed according to the perspective we adopt. Which also leads us to consider that the use of metaphors is also a means of action to shape the organization. Let us broaden our thinking about the bureaucratic - mechanistic - system and we will considerably expand our possibilities of shaping new organizations.
Some common metaphors in the narrative of organizations are:
Table 1
|
Metaphor |
Description |
| Machine | An organization designed to operate mechanically. |
| Organism | An organization designed to adapt to the environment. |
| Brain | A fractal organization based on teamwork and learning |
| Culture | An organization that emphasizes a certain corporate culture |
| Politics | A faction-based organization that organizes the interest of all parties. |
| Prison | An organization designed to resolve ideological conflicts and for the very sense of "organizing." |
| Flow and transformation | An organization that accepts different attractors and is self-organizing. |
| Dominant | An organization designed by a managerial and proprietary class to serve customers. |
If we manage to think and act in new ways, we will create new spaces of possibilities and perhaps solve some of the problems that the mechanistic organization has left, mobilizing at a practical level new ways to solve the problems of change and innovation.
We are going to see how the 21st century company has to face increasing complexity, so that the response mechanisms to this complexity are also evolving by organizations, while at the same time we are able to build new metaphors to read organizational life.
Knowledge as an act needs new organizational metaphors
Knowledge does not behave like an object and therefore treating it as such can only be transitory. What is necessary until we know how to use it to its full extent.
The essence of knowledge is action, I know when I know what I am going to do, and this without entering into other discussions, is what interests us for the world of the production of goods and services.
In fact, knowledge as an act has three constituents: the knower, the known, and a context. When one of these three constituents is not part of the reflection we are talking about something else, not knowledge. Knowledge is an act, not a stock, that requires the participation of a person, the knower, who inevitably knows within a given context or culture. It is a second-order good that is affected by indeterminacy, since it presents very different situations if you know what you don't know, if you know what you know, and if you don't know what you know, both individually and as a group.
Knowledge is never an object and therefore cannot be stored or reused, and of course it cannot be managed. What is stored and reused is information. What is managed is the selection and distribution of relevant information, but the act of knowing requires the presence of a connoisseur who will inevitably form part of a specific context that will influence said knowledge and its use.
If it is not possible to separate the knower and the known, the way of articulating knowledge and managing its creation is significantly different from those who do not start from this important premise. Knowledge is the intelligent use of relevant information by people who use it within a given context for a purpose. In business organizations the general purpose will be to innovate.
Therefore we can refer to knowledge formulating a series of basic principles that help us to recognize it:
- Knowledge is an act, not an object Knowledge is a human act that relies on the interpretation of data to act Knowledge is not associated with an academic degree or competence, which are only the potential capacity to know. It occurs in a context or culture and therefore also includes the skills and attitudes necessary to act. It resides fundamentally in the people. It is the people who decide in a given context if they want to try to give their knowledge to the organization for which they work, which makes the knowledge workers into volunteers. In spite of everything, it is an act that does not arrive at the request of the potential connoisseur, so it requires a specific personal and organizational predisposition to work in ambiguity, tolerate redundancy, and use experimentation.
These assertions are so important because of their consequences for the life of companies that they lead us to formulate a much more profound question. Is it necessary to learn to manage this "resource" in a different way or is it simply so decisive that what needs to be changed is the way of managing? If we want to "not waste knowledge" we must rethink the way of organizing the company, because knowledge is a "resource" that works very differently from physical resources.
E l knowledge is a resource that challenges the assumptions of the management of physical resources
- It does not have diminishing returns like physical goods, but on the contrary it grows with its use. With respect to its property it works in an absolutely different way than physical goods since when you give it, you do not lose it but you still have it. Taking into account the two previous statements, we see that the way to exploit knowledge is to share it.
This is a proposal for a change of perspective, because the most contradictory thing is to treat knowledge as matter, volume or as content, because it simply does not change the way of doing things.
We must overcome the vision of knowledge as a resource, as an object, and study it as an act. The process of knowing as opposed to knowing as an object. This vision is also a taking of position since it considers the person as a key element of the process and also as the ultimate recipient. Ontologically, it is based on a principle of emancipation of people, who are the ultimate holders of knowledge, and who voluntarily give it to the organization (Knowledge Workers). Epistemologically, the combination of tacit and explicit knowledge, and individual and group knowledge is raised.
It is not only about understanding how organizations create new products, new methods, and new forms of organization, but about something more important which is understanding how organizations create the knowledge that makes this creation possible. This is the work that remains to be completed in the paradigm of the company as a system that processes information formulated by Simon in 1945.
Possible organizational metaphors for creating knowledge
We can establish evolutionary states as a dialogue where we perceive the company in a first post-mechanistic state, as a living system that adapts and survives a changing and complex environment. It is about seeking adaptability to changing circumstances, for which it helps us to observe how living organisms perform this function. Different species are better prepared to survive in different environments, we will try to understand how organizations are born, grow, develop and decline, we analyze the relationships between species, and evolution in a larger system. Still, within the metaphor of living organisms, we see how the species that develop best are those with the greatest capacity to process information, the intelligent and capable of learning.The ability to learn is the hallmark of survivors.
| METAPHOR | Description |
| ADAPTIVE | Post-mechanistic to adapt to changing circumstances |
| LEARN | Internalized adaptation in a continuous learning process |
| Complex | The organization as a system of relationships that evolves and creates its environment: co-evolves |
In a more evolved stage, we will see organizations, not as a structure but as a complex adaptive system, through the creation of their own identity, channeled through different attractors that actually compete with each other.
Compared to the first evolutionary states based on selection or adaptation, it is not assumed that the change is generated in the environment. Living systems, according to this evolutionary state, are closed systems where the main product is to regenerate the system itself against changes, that is, to create an identity. The changes are assimilated to maintain an identity expressed in a set of relationships, making the environment not an external element to the system but part of this identity.
From this perspective it is from where we can develop active research in companies, incorporating emerging concepts, to build general and application models that unleash knowledge and innovation in organizations.
1 Silverman, D. (1971), "The Theory of Organizations: A Sociological Framework", London: Heineman.
2 Weick, K (1969), "The Social Psychology of Organizing". Reading MA: Addison - Wesley.
3 Weber, M. (1947), "The Theory of Social and Economic Organization", London: Oxford University Press.
