Our System : The Open Enterprise

Organizations literally create their knowledge throughlsocial processes involving knowledge production and integration. For example, in many cases the knowledge produced by a firm is produced by its managers, adopted into practice, and then later used by others. A business strategy, as well, is full of knowledge claims and directional pronouncements that were developed and adopted by managers for enterprise-wide implementation. Business processes, in turn, are nothing more than codified expressions of procedural knowledge.

Still, the social processes employed by different organizations to produce and integrate their knowledge may be dramatically different from one firm to another. Like political systems, knowledge processing environments can vary in make-up and performance. We can even use political terms like 'democratic' or 'oligarchical' to describe the ways in which firms produce their knowledge. In general, all of these variations can be mapped along a spectrum of relative openness.

The Open Enterprise idea is a visionary model for knowledge processing in organizations that sets the conditions for knowledge processing, in such a way that relative openness prevails. The intent, of course, is to make it possible for organizational knowledge to evolve in the bright light of day, in a way that also invites participation from all or most members of a firm. This stands in sharp contrast to the conventional approach taken by many firms, according to which knowledge is produced in concealed ways that too often lead to the adoption of decidedly bad ideas. MORE >>

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