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Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Aspects of Knowledge Management for Sustainable Development at Research and Teaching Organizations

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Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Aspects of Knowledge Management for Sustainable Development at Research and Teaching Organizations INTERDISCIPLINARY AND TRANSDISCIPLINARY ASPECTS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AT RESEARCH AND TEACHING ORGANIZATIONS ENRICO FEOLI Summary This paper discusses the role of knowledge management for sustainable development in research and teaching organizations (RTOs) by stressing the need that they would develop a common model of making sense when trying to couple “scientific research and social goals” to solve the wicked problems of humanity related to poverty, land degradation and climate change. After recalling the central role of the “ugly duckling” theorem in knowledge management, the paper suggests the use of the ontology approach within the single disciplines in order to promote the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. After considering the spatial dimension of the RTOs and the failure of the current use of science and technology to solve these wicked problems, this paper supports the idea of “rethinking development” on the basis of a paradigm of cooperation between RTOs of a transdisciplinary nature. The paper concludes that, notwithstanding an already active global computer network (Internet), it is necessary to develop and improve the research for adapting the “Web Evolution” to human needs. Keywords: knowledge management, sustainable development, interdisciplinary, research and teaching organizations 1. Introduction When I was invited by Professor Ludoslaw Drelichowski to participate to the international conference “Knowledge Management in Research and Teaching Organizations in Turbulent Environments” held at the University of Technology and Life Sciences in Bydgoszcz (Poland) from December 15–19, 2011 and to write a paper for the proceedings, I felt honored and I accepted the invitation as an occasion to review and challenge some of my ideas about the concept of knowledge management for sustainable development at research and teaching organizations (RTOs). Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the conference; however, I soon began to write the paper with the hope of writing something useful, at least for me, without any claim that the paper would be accepted and published in the proceedings of the conference. I am not an expert in knowledge management (KM) and informatics but an ecologist with interests in the human ecosystem and, in particular, in using informatics tools and mathematical methods to understand the role of vegetation within such a system. In carrying out my research activities, I try to produce knowledge useful for human needs in line with the visions expressed under different perspectives in Mayor’s book “Scientific Research and Social Goals: Towards a New Development Model” (20). 64 Enrico Feoli Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects of knowledge management for sustainable development at research and teaching organizations In this paper, I briefly consider the role of science and technology in “rethinking development” supported by the optimistic hope that, as intelligent enterprises, RTOs will be able to exploit the new information technologies on which KM relies. This will be essential to interacting with policy and planning organizations to create transdisciplinary networks capable of expressing, when necessary, clusters of expertise at different hierarchical levels suitable to facing the wicked problems related with poverty and land degradation (including deforestation, pollution, and climate change) that are emerging continuously in different parts of the world. 2. The “ugly duckling theorem” and its consequences in knowledge management The definition of knowledge is not simple and appears to be still debated in epistemology. There are many types of knowledge (8). However, I prefer to classify knowledge into three types: F) the knowledge of “Facts” (including objects and processes also called substances and accidents by Barry Smith (23), W) the knowledge of “What” to do in specific circumstances, and H) the knowledge of “How” to do what needs to be done. I like this classification because it can be useful for talking about KM in terms of set theory, fuzzy set theory, information theory, similarity theory, and decision theory. The literature in these fields, if we exclude the similarity theory (11), is immense and the paternity of ideas, especially in decision theory, is hard to define. The set of facts and processes (F), the set of actions that we have to do for realizing something (W), and the set of ways in which such actions should be done (H), are all subsets of the same set that we can call the set or the domain of knowledge (K). The comparisons of elements within each set (F), (W), and (H) can be done just for the sake of knowledge or for problem solving. In both cases, I think relevant the theorem of the “ugly duckling” of Watanabe (26) as described in his 1969 book “Knowing and Guessing: A quantitative Study of Inference and Information”. The theorem, described on page 376 of the book, says that “an ugly duckling and a swan are just as similar to each other as are two swans”. The first immediate consequence of the theorem in KM is the fact that until the “set of objects” labeled with the word “swan” is unknown, it is impossible to say that the ugly duckling is a swan. However, we find the most important consequence when we paraphrase the theorem in terms of problem solving, i.e. a problem can be solved only if at least one solution exists and we find it (finding a solution is analogous to finding the swans for the ugly duckling). Therefore, to solve Problem X means to find the suitable set of facts that characterize it (Fx), the suitable set of actions to be done (Wx), and a suitable set of methods or ways (Hx) by which to perform the necessary actions. The solution may be found among the many possible solutions that can be generated by combining thought and knowledge. The problem is to find a lattice Lx corresponding to the two sets (Wx) and (Hx) that is similar as much as possible to lattice Lox, that would lead to a solution that is the most similar to what we consider the optimal solution for the Problem X. The tale of Hans Christian Andersen provides another insight relevant for KM, namely the fact that in order to discover the swans, the ugly duckling had to go outside of his farmyard. This reminds us of Einstein’s aphorism, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. However, we have to admit that without knowledge imagination would not very useful in guessing. For example, knowledge of the ecosystem concept was useful to create the “digital ecosystem”, an information structure considered very useful to solve practical problems (e.g. organization of the 65 Studies & Proceedings of Polish Association for Knowledge Management No. 58, 2012 knowledge within and between Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) (9). It is obvious that knowledge is essential to stimulate the imagination in order to solve problems and, going back to the concept of a “digital ecosystem”, it is clear that it became a reality only after ICT’s people started to know the concept of an ecosystem. I do not want to describe what a “digital ecosystem” is as it will take up too much space, and I am not competent enough to do it properly; the interested reader can visit the website http://www.digital-ecosystem.org to get the idea about the concept. I will just summarize the concept with the definition given by Wikipedia: “A digital ecosystem is a distributed adaptive open socio-technical system with properties of self-organization, scalability, and sustainability; a “digital ecosystem” is informed by knowledge of natural ecosystems and is still being defined”. It would be useful also to know that since 2007 there has been a yearly IEEE International conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technology (DEST), whose proceedings may be found on the Internet. I only want to conclude that the ugly duckling theorem suggests that KM strategies should be addressed by the RTOs to develop an accessible information system that would let the users, as agents in planning and management activities, to reach the most complete knowledge of a given domain in order to let them to “find the swans”. 3. Turbulence in a scientific mind: the need for ontologies I was attracted by the title of the conference since, besides evoking our perception of the turbulence in the political, socio-economic, cultural, and scientific systems in which we are living today, it evokes a frequent state of “turbulence” in my mind. This occurs frequently when I have to decide what the content of my lectures will be; when I decide the priority among the topics to carry out within the fields of my research interests; when I have to decide on the methods of data acquisition and data analysis; when I have to write a paper explaining the results of my research, but it always occurs when I am searching Internet in order to keep myself updated on the emerging science of sustainability (15). Following the web links, I always find new news about international and national initiatives around Agenda 21 and Kyoto protocol; about the initiatives of the European Environmental Agency on NATURA 2000 and on pollution prevention; about new organizations dealing with sustainable economy (e.g. the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability) and on the Green Economy, that push the state of my mind here and there in the multidimensional space of my knowledge with turbulent trajectories that have the negative effects to create in myself an uncomfortable state of uncertainty. It is because I identify the turbulence as one of the main causes of uncertainty, and uncertainty itself as a cause of turbulence that I like to mention the Angell’s paper (3) “Living with Uncertainty and Loving it”. I think that Angell’s paper represents a paradigm that we, as humans, should accept and try to internalize if we want avoid “neuroses” at any level of our organizations, from the individual to society as a whole.
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