Knowledge Generation, Use and Management in Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering William P. Hall President Kororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.org Principal EA Principals – http://eaprincipals.com [email protected]http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net Access my research papers from Google Citations A unique area in the state space of the Mandlebrot set definition An attractor Presentation for CVEN90043 Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering, 23 May 2014 Attribution CC BY
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Knowledge Generation, Use and Management in Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering
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Knowledge Generation, Use and Management
inSustainable Infrastructure Engineering
William P. HallPresidentKororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.orgPrincipalEA Principals – http://eaprincipals.com
1990-2007: Documentation and knowledge management systems analyst and designer for Tenix Defence while it grew to be Australia’s largest defence engineering prime contractor and then failed. How did it succeed and why did it then fail?
2001-present: Independent researcher trying to understand what knowledge is and why organizations (especially engineering organizations) find it so difficult to manage and apply knowledge
Currently a member of Riddells Creek Landcare committee You might call me an “organizational biologist” and/or a
“enterprise engineer”3
Formed 1987 to bid for $7 BN defense project to build 10 ANZAC Frigates for Australian (8) & New Zealand (2) Navies
Oct. 1989 began stringently fixed price contract, with many difficult warranty/ liquidated damages milestones
Project completed 2007 with every ship delivered on-time, on-budget, company profit and happy customers
Staff learned many things about shipbuilding & management of complex projects
Mid 2004 began a $500 M project to build 7 ships to commercial standards for New Zealand, to be completed in 2007
By 2007 only one ship had been delivered – and that with substantial defects. Tenix costs were so far over contract value that Tenix auctioned its Defence assets to highest bidder (BAE Systems Australia)
Tenix management thought the company knew how to build ships, but line management policies prevented transfer of staff personal knowledge from ANZAC project to NZ project.
Last ship delivered by BAE Systems in 2010 together with NZ$86.4 settlement for delays and remaining defects.
– Hall, W.P., Nousala, S., Kilpatrick B. 2009. One company – two outcomes: knowledge integration vs corporate disintegration in the absence of knowledge management. VINE: The journal of information and knowledge management systems 39(3), 242-258
Some lessons I learned from Tenix Defence about corporate and engineers’ management
of knowledge
Engineers (and many others) have difficulties understanding intangible stuff like “knowledge”
Engineers are good at establishing and applying formal rules and standards to discover and build solutions for well analysed problems
They are not so good at solving problems involving people or other chaotic components
Engineers work in and with organizations comprised of people who are inherently error prone and sometimes chaotic
By recognizing these problems of knowledge and organization, engineers can build systems to minimize uncertainty and manage knowledge they need5
Topics for today
Key frameworks of understanding for sustainability practice– Tragedy of the commons
Elinor Ostrom (Nobel Laureate)– Models of governance
Herbert Simon (Nobel Laureate)– Theoretical basis for decision support– Theory of hierarchically complex systems
– Intersecting theories of organization and knowledge Engineering for sustainability unavoidably
involves understanding the social use of resources – People, communities and their imperatives– Social systems & infrastructure– Knowledge & decision support
In time available today, I can only introduce topics
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Topic 1―
Sustainability and the “tragedy of the
commons”
Infrastructure includes those components of the complex system of
systems comprised of the environment and people responsible
for mediating the material and energetic interactions of people, systems and their environment
To successfully engineer infrastructure for sustainability you
must understand the human components as well as the environmental components
Based on Else, S., Hall, W.P. 2012 presentation. Enterprise knowledge architecture for community action. Kororoit Institute International Symposium and Workshop - Living Spaces for Change: Socio-technical knowledge of cities and regions. 29 February – 2 March 2012, North Melbourne, Australia
“The tragedy of the commons”Garrett Hardin 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science Vol. 162, No 3859, pp.
1243-1248– Sets out the consequences of an uncompromising economic
logic governing the harvesting of valuable but limited resources from a commons
Unfettered individuals make a net profit of +1 for every unit of resource they extract/harvest and use
The future loss due to the removal of that unit is shared with all other individuals extracting the resource for a net loss of -1/n
It is always to the net economic advantage of every individual to continue extracting the resource until the resource is totally consumed
Situation grows worse if the resource’s unit value rises with scarcity
Any individual refraining from extraction only benefits those who thus have more resource to extract
Only through some form of higher level control or governance (e.g., social or despotic) over the scarce resource can its extraction be limited to some socially beneficial level
GOVERNING OUR INTERACTIONS WITH OUR ENVIRONMENT SO WE CAN SUSTAIN OUR LIFE
IN THE ENVIRONMENT IS DIFFICULT!
Governance is the exercise of authority over the actions, affairs, etc, of a political unit, people, etc, as well as the performance of certain functions for this unit or body; the action of governing; political rule and administration.
In other words, governance is the application of socio/political constraints over individual action by some higher level entity above the individual self.
Governance can have good or bad consequences9
Our world is finite
Elinor Ostrom (2009) awarded Nobel Prize in Economic Science) for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons– Understanding the different kinds of markets
– Types of goods– Management economics– Showed resources can be managed successfully by involving
people (i.e., principal stakeholders!) who use them in the governance
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTINGENCIES & CONSTRAINTS IMPACT OF
REALIZEDOUTCOMES
RULES RESPOND TO CONSTRAINT
S
Successful governance structures based on sets of rules regulating exploiters to ensure optimum management/exploitation of resource
– Rules respond to constraints– Impacts are consequences of realized outcomes of the application of the rules
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Ostrom’s resource governance model
Conceptual changes: common property resource– common pool resources– common property regimes– recognized 5 property types
access, withdrawal, management, exclusion & alienation– Property rights systems for different resources mix all five
One rule does not fit all situations! Concluded that successful systems followed certain practices
(i.e., design principles) reflecting knowledge of particular environments– Clear user & resource boundaries– Congruence between benefits & costs– Graduated sanctions– Conflict resolution mechanisms– Minimal recognition of rights by government– Nested enterprises– Regular/continuous monitoring of users & resource conditions with
corrective feedback12
Governance = making and imposing decisions on communities with
costs/benefits
Herbert A. Simon (1978) Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations and the limits to rationality
– Perfect decisions only possible with perfect knowledge and unlimited time to consider alternatives
– Real world requires “satisficing” – i.e., best guess given the available knowledge and time, optimizing time, knowledge, and urgency
– Simon’s other work explored the architecture of hierarchically complex systems (i.e., nearly decomposable)
Effective governance depends on– Availability of appropriate knowledge– Sufficient time for thinking before the next problem arises– Capabilities to act– Availability of resources to support action
For a project to be sustainable engineers must understand the relationships between the engineered product and the community that will use it and the enterprise(s) that will govern it
Need to engineer the structure of the project/community enterprise to optimize resource governance (“social engineering”?)13
Government powers and resources vs local knowledge
Trade offs– local
knowledge vsscientific knowledge
– Timely decision vs adequate knowledge
– power to act vs will to act
Knowledge management at multiple levels is crucial
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Theories of organization and
knowledge
physical theories are the basis for structural
engineering
theories of knowledge and organization are the basis for
enterprise engineering
Knowledge has a physical basis
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Organizations exist in contexts
No enterprise or subsidiary component should be considered in isolation from its existential contexts– What are its imperatives for continued existence?
to maintain survival and wellbeing to maintain resource inputs necessary to survival to produce and distribute goods necessary to survival to survive environmental changes to minimize risk to maintain future wellbeing
– Organizational systems satisfying imperatives must track continually changing contexts with observations, decisions and actions
Beware of empty rhetoric and mismatches with real imperatives (e.g., “mission statements”)
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Causation in hierarchical structure
Holon – a “two faced” system that looks upward to the supersystem that constrains its behavior, and downward to the subsystems that determine what it is possible for it to do.
Downward causation - Every organized entity (holon) is a component within a higher-level supersystem (e.g., “the economy”, “the system of government”) forming an environment that constrains what the holon can or must do to survive (= meet requirements)
Every holon interacts with other holons at its own focal level of organization to form that higher level supersystem
Upward causation - Every holon is comprised of lower-level subsystems (e.g., people, machines) whose capabilities and law-like behavioral interactions determine what is possible for the entity to do
Knowledge-based “adaptive” systems exist at several hierarchical levels of structural organization– Nation– State– Council– Community group– Person– Body cell
For effective action, flows of knowledge, decision and action must pass through several hierarchical levels
Seeing complex adaptive systems in a systems hierarchy
Constraints and boundaries, regulations determine what is physically allowable
Understanding community action in the complex hierarchy
– hierarchical bottom-up construction of knowledge
– hierarchical top-down devolution of decision & action Knowing and acting entities are complex adaptive systems
that must continually work to maintain their survivals– May act as components in higher level systems– May be comprised of lower level systems– Knowledge must pass across systems at same level and up & down
hierarchy19
Knowledge = solutions to problems
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Pn a real-world problem faced by a living entity
TS a tentative solution/theory.Tentative solutions are varied through serial/parallel iteration
EE a test or process of error elimination
Pn+1 changed problem as faced by an entity incorporating a surviving solution
The whole process is iterated All knowledge claims are constructed, cannot be proven to be true TSs may be embodied as “structure” in the “knowing” entity, or TSs may be expressed in words as hypotheses, subject to objective criticism; or
as genetic codes in DNA, subject to natural selection Objective expression and criticism lets our theories die in our stead Through cyclic iteration, sources of errors are found and eliminated Solutions/theories become more reliable as they survive repetitive testing Surviving TSs are the source of all knowledge!
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge – An Evolutionary Approach(1972), pp. 241-244
Forms of knowledge– Tacit – Implicit– Articulated – Explicit – Procedural – Declarative
●Sense making– W2 process
constructing tacit understanding in context
– We only know what we know when we need to know it
Nickols, F. 2000. The knowledge in knowledge management (KM). in J.W. Cortada and J.A. Woods, eds. The Knowledge Management Yearbook 2001-2002. Butterworth-Heinemann
Following Karl Popper, knowledge is solutions to problems of living– Cycles of creation and destruction (Boyd, Osinga)
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act Creation = assembly of sense data and information to suggest
claims about the world Destruction = testing and criticizing claims against the world to
eliminate those claims that don’t work– Solutions are those claims which prove to work (at least most
of the time) Knowledge is mentally constructed Cannot logically prove that any claimed solution is actually true All claims must be considered to be tentative (i.e., potentially
fallible) Follow tested claims until they are replaced by something that
works better Knowledge building cycles are endlessly iterated and may
exist at several hierarchical levels of organization
Important difference– individual knowledge (in any form) is known only by a person – organizational knowledge is available and physically or socially
accessible to those who may apply it for organizational needs– Even where explicit knowledge exists, individual knowledge
may be required to access it within a useful response time. People know:
– what knowledge the organization needs, – who may know the answer, – where in the organization explicit knowledge may be found, – why the knowledge is important or why it was created, – when the knowledge might be needed, and – how to apply the knowledge
This human knowledge is critical to the organization Snowden, D. 2002.
Complex acts of knowing: paradox and descriptive self-awareness. J. Knowledge Management 6:100-111– Personal knowledge is volunteered; it cannot be conscripted. – People always know more than can be told, and will tell more
than can be written down. – People only know what they know when they need to know it.
Service delivery Growth Sustainability Profitability Risk mitigation
Knowledge audit Knowledge mapping
Business disciplines
Technology & systems
I nformation disciplines
I ncentives & disincentives
Etc.
I nternal / external communication
Taxonomies Searching & retrieval
Business process analysis & reengineering
Tracking and monitoring
I ntelligence gathering
QA / QC
Strategic management
Architectural role
Communities of Practice
Corporate communications
HR practices Competitive intelligence
I T strategy Etc.
…ITERATION …
END
See below for slides removed from a more complete presentation
27
Some papers on relevant technology for building knowledge infrastructures for
sustainability
Hall, W.P., Nousala, S., Best, R., Nair, S. 2012. Social networking tools for knowledge-based action groups. (in) Computational Social Networks - Part 2: Tools, Perspectives and Applications, (eds) Abraham, A., Hassanien, A.-E. Springer-Verlag, London, pp. 227-255
Nousala, S., Hall, W.P., Hadgraft, R. 2011. Socio-technical systems for connecting social knowledge and the governance of urban action. 15th WMSCI, CENT Symposium, July 19-22, 2011, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Vines, R., Hall, W.P., McCarthy, G. 2011. Textual representations and knowledge support-systems in research intensive networks. (in) Cope, B., Kalantzis, M., Magee, L. (eds). Towards a Semantic Web: Connecting Knowledge in Academic Research. Oxford: Chandos Press, pp. 145-195.
Hall, W.P., Nousala, S., Best, R. 2010. Free technology for the support of community action groups: theory, technology and practice. Knowledge Cities World Summit, 16-19, November 2010, Melbourne, Australia
Hall, W.P., Nousala, S. 2010. What is the value of peer review – some sociotechnical considerations. Second International Symposium on Peer Reviewing, ISPR 2010 June 29th - July 2nd, 2010 – Orlando, Florida, USA
Hall, W.P., Nousala, S., Vines, R. 2010. Using Google’s apps for the collaborative construction, refinement and formalization of knowledge. ICOMP'10 - The 2010 International Conference on Internet Computing July 12-15, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Nousala, S., Miles, A., Kilpatrick, B., Hall, W.P. 2009. Building knowledge sharing communities using team expertise access maps (TEAM). International Journal of Business and Systems Research 3(3), 279-296.
Government relations: – Hall, W.P., Nousala, S., Best, R. 2010.
Free technology for the support of community action groups: theory, technology and practice. Knowledge Cities World Summit, 16-19, November 2010, Melbourne, AustraliaNousala, S., Hall, W.P., Hadgraft, R. 2011.
– Socio-technical systems for connecting social knowledge and the governance of urban action. 15th WMSCI, CENT Symposium, July 19-22, 2011, Orlando, Florida, USA.
– Hall, W.P., Kilpatrick, B. 2011. Managing community knowledge to build a better world. Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) 30th November - 2nd December, 2011, Sydney, Australia.
Context of decision making– Hall, W.P., Else, S., Martin, C., Philp, W. 2011.
Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1-28.
Organisational management of project and technical knowledge over fleet lifecycles. Australian Journal of Mechanical Engineering. 5(2):81-95.
– Hall, W.P. 2007. Managing lifecycles of complex projects. Government Transformation Journal, July 2007.
– Nousala, S., Miles, A., Kilpatrick, B., Hall, W.P. 2005. Building knowledge sharing communities using team expertise access maps (TEAM). Proceedings, KMAP05 Knowledge Management in Asia Pacific Wellington, N.Z. 28-29 November 2005.
– Hall, W.P. and Brouwers, P. 2004. The CMIS solution for Tenix's M113 program. MatrixOne Innovation Summit. Shangri-La's Rasa Sentosa Resort, Singapore, 12 - 14 August, 2004.
– Hall, W.P. 2008. Presentations for 421-672 Management of Technological Enterprises - Managing Knowledge in Technological Enterprises, Masters in Engineering Management, University of Melbourne: Lecture 1 , Tutorial 1 , Lecture 2
Autocracy/despotism (Wikipedia): – supreme political power to direct all state activities is concentrated in
the hands of one person (autocracy) or group (despotism), whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control
Gargantuan (R.C. Wood via V. Ostrom): – formation of a single metropolitan government over all
Multi-level governance (European Union via Wikipedia):– many interacting authority structures work at various hierarchical
levels in the emergent global and local economy Polycentric
– (V Ostrom et al. 1961): traditional pattern of government in a metropolitan area with its multiplicity of political jurisdictions
– (E Ostrom 2009): many centers of decision making that are formally independent of each other. Whether they actually function independently, or instead constitute an interdependent system of relations, is an empirical question in particular cases
Community-based resource management (Berkes 2006)– local resource usage governed by local community
Co-management (Berkes 2009): – sharing of power and responsibility between the government and local
resource users30
New tools extending human cognition introduce radical capabilities for knowledge
infrastructure
“Instant” observation/communication/decision/action possible– Every smart phone in a hand is an intelligent sensing node also
capable of organizing and supporting action visual (photo & video sharing) auditory (Skype, etc.) spatial (geotagging) textual (twitter, email, blogging, etc.)
A coherently definable organized entity that may be:– Comprised of multiple interacting entities– Unified by a common system of governance– Working towards a common goal
technological, and legal)– constantly receives, uses, transforms, produces and distributes products and
services that have value to itself and its customers– exhibits characteristics of hierarchical complexity, reactivity, adaptability,
emergence, downward and upward causation, self-organization, non-linear chaotic responses
An organized, notionally bounded socio-technical system, addressing its internal / external imperatives for business / survival (i.e., an “organic” entity), comprised of
– People (participants in the organization from time to time)– Processes (automated, documented, tacit routines, etc.)– Infrastructure (Web, ICT, physical plant, etc.)– Organizational knowledge (i.e., contributing to organizational
structure/success) Knowledge as a deliverable product (e.g., technical documentation) Knowledge about and embodied in deliverable products Knowledge about and embodied in organizational processes and
infrastructure Members’ personal knowledge relating to their organizational roles
No enterprise or subsidiary component should be considered in isolation from its existential contexts– What are its imperatives for continued existence?
to maintain survival and wellbeing to maintain resource inputs necessary to survival to produce and distribute goods necessary to survival to survive environmental changes to minimize risk to maintain future wellbeing
– Organizational systems satisfying imperatives must track continually changing contexts with observations, decisions and actions
Beware of empty rhetoric and mismatches with real imperatives (e.g., “mission statements”)
35
Where does knowledge exist?
36
Energy flowThermodynamics
PhysicsChemistry
Biochemistry
Cyberneticself-regulation
CognitionConsciousness
Tacit knowledge
Genetic heredityRecorded thoughtComputer memory
Logical artifactsExplicit knowledge
Reproduce/Produce
Develop/Recall
Drive/Enab
le
Reg
ulate/Control In
ferr
ed lo
gic
Des
crib
e/Pr
edict
Test
Observe
World 1
Existence/Reality
World 2
World of mental orpsychological states and processes, subjective experiences, memory of history
Organismic/personal/situational/ subjective/tacit knowledge in world 2 emerges from world 1 processes
World 3
The world of “objective” Knowledge Produced / evaluated by world 2 processes
“living/personal
knowledge”
“codified /explicit
knowledge”
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge – An Evolutionary Approach (1972)
Hall, W.P. 2011. Physical basis for theemergence of autopoiesis, cognition and knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 2: 1-63
Forms of knowledge– Tacit (W2)– Implicit (W2)– Articulated (W2)– Explicit (W3)– Procedural (W2)– Declarative (W2/W3)
●Sense making– W2 process
constructing tacit understanding in context
– We only know what we know when we need to know it
Nickols, F. 2000. The knowledge in knowledge management (KM). in J.W. Cortada and J.A. Woods, eds. The Knowledge Management Yearbook 2001-2002. Butterworth-Heinemann