One of the interesting ideas to come out of the "knowledge movement" was the attempt to view an business organization as a "knowledge structure." One of the champions of this position was Bruce Kogut, who, together with his colleagues Shan and Walker, published a paper in 1993 with the intriguing title, "Knowledge in the network and the network as knowledge: Structuring of new industries." In a recent survey paper on communication networks, Peter Monge and Noshir Contractor summarized one of Kogut's key insights:Once organizations choose partners, however, they tend to spend less time seeking other partners. As Kogut, Shan, and Walker (1993) say, "because information is determined by previous relations and in turn influences the subsequent propensity to do more relations, the structure of the network tends to replicate itself over time. The early history of cooperation tends to lock in subsequent cooperation" (p. 70). Further, they observe that "The replication of the network is a statement of the tendency of learning to decline with time. The structure of the network is a limiting constraint on how much new learning can be achieved. ...But when viewed from the perspective of the evolution of networks, there is a tendency for old lessons to be retaught" (p. 71).
This got me to thinking about the concept of "normal science" and the role it played in Thomas Kuhn's study, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Here is how Kuhn characterized the concept:
In this essay, ‘normal science’ means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice. Today such achievements are recounted, though seldom in their original form, by science textbooks, elementary and advanced. These textbooks expound the body of accepted theory, illustrate many or all of its successful applications, and compare these applications with exemplary observations and experiments. Before such books became popular early in the nineteenth century and until even more recently in the newly matured sciences, many of the famous classics of science, by such writers as Aristotle, Newton and Ben Franklin, served for a time to define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.
It strikes me that Kogut's characterization of an organizational network as knowledge bears a strong family resemblance to Kuhn's characterization of normal science. The kind of knowledge that Kogut seems to have in mind is knowledge of "how things are supposed to be done" in an organization; and one strategy for maintaining that organization is to replicate that knowledge. In a similar way scientific communities may be viewed as organizations; and, to the extent that any community is based on the need to distinguish a collective "self" from an "other," normal science defines the community, not by its scientific results, but by the implicit knowledge of how things are supposed to be done. Straying from the path entails leaving (or being banished from) the community. Abandoning normative standards entails abandoning the recognition of one's activities as legitimate.
This returns us to the theme of order and chaos. Organizations, both industrial and scientific, depend heavily on a sense of identity in order to "get things done." However, we are now confronted with the question of how one establishes identity (which implies some sense of stability) in a context that is becoming increasingly chaotic. Normal science, in a sense, denies that there is chaos out there (or, to invoke Henry Miller's language, denies that there is no confusion that cannot ultimately be understood). Romanticism challenges this premise and, in so doing, challenges a normative approach to science (which is why Kuhn introduces the concept of scientific revolution in the first place) and may also challenge a normative approach to business organization.
Meeting that challenge may involve returning to the theme of the opposition of faith and interpretation. At the end of the day, the decision to accept that the conduct of science or business management rests on normative standards is an act of faith. One cannot invoke scientific method to justify the conduct of normal science. Indeed, much of the reaction against Kuhn had to do with the fact that the concept of a scientific revolution could be seen as a refutation of the validity of the normative conduct of normal science, thus challenging the prevailing faith of scientists at the time Kuhn's book appeared. Similarly, our commitment to normative standards of business management is also an act of faith; and all it takes are intimations of refutation to remind us how strong that faith is in the established community of managers.
In posing interpretation as an opposition to faith, I argue that anything we confront in the world always needs to be subject to interpretation; and, because the context is always changing, we cannot assume that any interpretation is stable or enduring. All we can do is hone our interpretive skills and continue to exercise them as a safeguard against atrophy. There is no guarantee that this will solve any major problems like unemployment or war, but it should at least keep us from sleepwalking through the world that others want to make for us!
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