Politics and Politics - from Power as Control, to Power as Caring
24-Jun-04
Politics and Politics - from Power as Control, to Power as Caring
Angela NOBRE
alnobre@mail.telepac.pt
Knowledge and power
The relationship between knowledge and power has long been recognised. Probably the most interesting analysis of the interrelations between knowledge and power has been developed by Michel Foucault.
The special nature of the human sciences
Natural sciences, by developing theories which aim at explaining how physical phenomenon occur do not have any influence on these phenomena. However, social sciences, or human sciences, as Foucault liked to call them, by defining specific conceptualisations of what it means to be human do have an influence on human beings. To put it in other words, the conceptualisations that we have about who we are as an animal species have a direct influence on how we lead our lives. The power related to social institutions, structures and practices is sustained precisely by these conceptualisations.
KM and the revolution of mentalities
Knowledge management theory and practice aims at being power and politically neutral. However, and again if we believe in Foucault’s reasoning, any definition of ‘knowledge’ or of the ‘experts’ who are to have the credibility and legitimacy to define that which is to be considered as ‘knowledge’ is intrinsically, constitutively, and unavoidably power related. That is, the relation between power and knowledge is inescapable. Nevertheless, if we draw on further conceptualisations we may develop an alternative picture, i.e. alternative to interpreting power as reduced to a dominating and control approach. Power may be seen from an alternative perspective if we acknowledge the importance of power as the ‘power’ to care for others, to serve, to invest and to create further opportunities for others. Altruistic behaviour, as was referred above, may be interpreted as a form of species development. Current organisational contexts are definitely complex so that it is plausible to relate the changes brought by the knowledge economy with an increase in complexity and the need to develop alternative forms of relating, namely collaborative and altruistic forms of behaviour. Caring and investing in other people or the explicit use of power in terms of altruistic behaviour does not necessarily relate to moralistic issues; altruism, under this perspective, is not important because it is ‘good’ or ‘right’. Rather the issue is one of understanding what complexity means and implies and to acknowledge that ‘caring for others’ is a also a form of non-altruistic behaviour, i.e. it implies the understanding that caring for others is a necessary and automatic component of individual’s own objectives in a context of high complexity. To put it in other words, a complexity perspective forces the awareness of the interrelations which are often neglected and taken for granted. By explicitly investing in the promotion of the collaborative aspects of these relations both altruistic and non-altruistic behaviours converge. Knowledge management may be interpreted as promoting the theorisation and practical development, at organisational level, of this integration. Therefore, knowledge management should rightly avoid and help to denounce the ‘politics’ related to power issues of dominance and control and should explicitly address the ‘politics’ of transformative and creative ‘power’.
© Angela Nobre 2004
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- Author:
- Angela Nobre
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 24-Jun-04
- Categories:
- Human and Social, Human Side of KM
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Would Portugal dare help us stage a revolt against academic certainty
The two threads currently intitiated out of Portugal have led me to an admittedly unsafe twin hypothesis
I read so many academic papers (actually this started in the early 1970s with psychology papers that I had to maths review for an education department in a Uni for 3 years) which start by saying they are going to provide us with a simple model of life. They then mix 2 things that academics love but time-pressurised interdisciplinary practitioners ignore, and so end by missing the whole disemmination enchalada (except within their own elite).
The two things they do:
Community of Complex: Understandably -given funding-reward system and hierarchical refereeing process- they go deeper and deeeper into that discipline's precedences and jargons. These for the practitioner version of the paper should be endnotes.
They do some factor or other large numbers analysis which they have been taught is the crowning glory of confirming there's a model. Actually, as a mathematician what I look at is what assumptions have been buried by the particular calculation; and what horrifies me is not the researcher but the referees condoning such buried assumptions.
So these academic processes are not simplification for the interdisciplinary practitioner. What she or he wants is to hear of the simple model's biggest new learning rule to "out" in respectfully valuing life's sytsems with. She or he will (with peers) then caringly test its contextual applications. And if it provides innovation across contexts, will applaud and reconfirm the math's assumptions had real world validity.
But there is one other nasty in what I have described; the greatest breakthrough models for simplicity of managing life will be those that challenge the current orthodoxies of power. So here again is a reason why academics usually dont dare be upfront in announcing their greatest management discoveries in a usable way.
Now if you are still reading this: let's test out 3 economic contexts trasfomring life in last 25 years that most need one simple transformational pattern rule:
what new pattern rule governs the most sustainable organisational model if you are in service economy - one where people (not machine investments) are central to compounding future value dynamics
what new pattern rules governs cooperative networks or organisations capable of compounding both global value and transparent harmony in every local society they connect
what is tha pattern rule of Triple Management : hierarchy, self-organising, transparent organising across boundaries that compose a network of organisations
These are the 3 new economy power questions that I haven't yet seen research deliver one simple knowledge economics paper delivered on. Though love anyone to prove that I haven't been looking in right spaces by linking us to a breakthrough simple model.
Turn the question round to see where power compounds the worst abuse
30 years into social odyssey of who are the most discriminated people groups among our 6 billion. Top of my list:
women- those in extreme poverty areas: in some places up to 5% killed as non economic life by midwives at birth ; up to 20% used like camels to carry water to & fro - you can decimal point the numbers if you search; what % I dunno imprisoned not to challenge anything a man says
nomads
kids and youth where the country is in corruption or war
The unsustainable fact that all the power of the BBC 1,,2 can do in investigating such stories is red nose nights or trivial quizzes of the nations is why Londoners' metanetworks will close it down (why do we each pay 120 pounds annually for it? what European and global human rights have we left to listen to true storytelling?) rather than another 10 years as is.
Great to read other's lists of the which of our 6 billion human beings have been most systemically disconnected. Next: ASK what powers in this world indirectly- and often as clusters we call global industry sectors - must share compound responsibility for these consequences. Others of these value destroying Powers compound back a long way like the decline of the British Empire- (family sources: granddad was constitutional adviser on how to handover Independence to India, father is UK's senior practitioner of future history journalism)
Under construction: a few threads on which global coporate or government sectors need to be transparently reinspected and why it comes down to people everwyhere agreeing zero tolerance to Economics of Externalities - literally 21st C source of all evil, though it quickly flows into many beds, including those that were only conceived (Europewide) under the foundation gravity of : no more wars please.
A big area of verbal diarrohea will be sorting through futures papers- something my family has co-edited for 60 year now with anyone who will openly cooperate in such painstaking eyeballing. More of that here
http://futureoflondon.blogspot.com/1999_12_01_futureoflondon_archive.html
Obviously, this virtual office is being prepared so any citizen group can co-edit it. As forewarned in my blog on recursion in blog co-editing, it may take a few weeks before the above bookmark reveals all its 6 billion colours
the challenge of the K and Power perspective
(Thanks Chris!)
Dear Tomasz,
thank you for your interest! I am pleased to hear about this event and I am glad that the theme of power is gaining the CEO's attention.
I'll be glad to collaborate further if that 'becomes relevant within the context'. That is: I believe that it takes some time and effort to become reasonably familiar with the 'power' perspective within organisations. And the CEOs might be interested in meeting and in hearing some new speaches but it is another matter to decide to 'dive in' into the power perspective. In my view it is like comparing watching coloured or B&W TV - you see the same things differently... Or looking into a house through different windows, you see the same reality through different perspectives. From a power 'perspective', power is always there, unavoidably, and it is multisided and multidirectional. The familarity with this perspective might bring immediate disconfort and also long term gains both at personal and professional level - for the CEOs and across the company. Because: it takes a deeper, more complex, more 'sensitive' view on reality and therefore is able to open new ways that were previously unafordable or inacessible. Is this too abstract or difficult to understand? I think it is. But I am doing my best to help anyway! You probably have not read my article and I simpatise with that. If you find that I can be of further help do let me know! We do live in challenging times and I do believe that we have to be commited to whatever we do to do it well. Commitment involves making sense of things and the better understanding of power relations is definitely an interesting way to go! Sorry if I have not answered your straighforward questions about results, time, etc, but I do believe that that is another story. Power is something else!
best wishes for your event!
Angela Nobre
big = better or more powerful
In the west there are lots of references to debates of what we've got today in our largest organisations; I'll search through some files and come back with a set of bookmarks
WHEN BIG IS NOT BETTER water: 1 news:1 brands: 1
global:1
Knowledge vs. Power in Organizations
Dear Angela, dear All,
I have read your most interesting discussions as I am preparing the CEO debate at the KM Poland Congress this April. The topic will be KNOWLEDGE vs. POWER IN ORGANIZATIONS. The participants, apart from Harvard Business Review Poland Editor and our guest speaker Karl-Erik Sveiby, will be CEOs of biggest companies in Poland.
Is knowledge really a source of power in organizations? Should it be? Are we paying our employees for what they know (potential), for what they do (outcomes) or for just coming to work (time)? How does knowledge-focused leadership change the power structures in companies? Who loses and who gets more power if the company starts to manage its knowledge flows more effectively?
What are your feelings about it? I would be really gratefull for your reflections and key questions you think we should be asking during the debate.
Thanks
Tomasz
A Message to the H-sig community!
Yes! This is to YOU, the reader!
WHile reading this message you are already commited, captive, prisioner... of the enchantment of what KM has to offer!
Therefore, do carry on with your search, do quest and do develop your questionning capacity, and of course... let US KNOW ABOUT IT!!!
Yes, it's all about DECONSTRUCTION
Thank you Jacques but you embarass me with your comments!!! All I do in my work is to try to take seriously the lessons from my domain of study thinkers: Argyris came up with reflexive practices and the double-loop learning (the thinking about thinking and the questionning of ALL our assumptions). However, he came from and remained within a cognitivist perspective therefore unable to cope with the complexity of the social world. Senge says that organisations change only when people change and that people change only when they change from within. However, Senge is also captive of the cognitivist and dualistic lenses. Taking Peirce's pragmatism, and avoiding all dualisms and all Cartesian divides between mind and body, the interior and the exterior, the individual and the collective, the theory and the practice, we beguin to understand that the 'within' and the change from within is only possible when the 'social world' (the Greek's Antiquity 'world, as a philosophical concept) is changed. My interest in KM is precisely because I believe that it can contribute to this 'change' of the 'world'.
game theory and the survival of "cooperative" behaviours
Thank you Miguel... I love your 'economic' mind! Being an economist myself this cannot be an insult!.... Yes, you're absolutelly right. Game theory explores exactly the issues which I theorise about and they develop statistic and mathematical 'proofs'!!! There's a lot here to explore... it is overwhelming, like a vertigo: the fascination with all these complex interelations of theories emerging from wide apart knowledge domains, all pointing into the 'same' direction: collaboration is K sharing...
language, that fundamental tool!
Thank you Chris for your comments! I do find it hard to follow all your complex reasoning and your implications though from what I could grasp, yes, i do identify a lot with that strugle to try to put some sense and meaning into what we find in this world. And yes, the East South issue is fundamental. I like to think that over two thousand years ago the defeated people would be exterminated - the whole population - so that when slavery was invented it was a huge quantum leap forward! In the 17 hundred, 1000 babys a year were abandonned to die in the streets of London; some of this might still happen today in some parts of the world but there are some slow advances... Yes, there is a lot to do, and life is something beautiful when we find that besides all the horrors, there is still the hope of some improvement!
For my research on Organisational Learning I use four philosophical categories: action, language, knowledge and meaning. Heidegger says that human reasoning is about situatedness, discursiveness and understanding. Can't we learn beautiful lessons in KM related areas!!??!!...
Yes! The balancing issue/act of KM!
Thank you Cindy for your critical comments... A lot to digest on them! Actually, a whole new discussion could start just on the points that you raise!! Max Weber said that social sciences were about the understanding of meaningfull collective action and Karl Marx thought that soc. sc. could be REVOLUTIONARY, i.e. could change the world... Many soc scientists, one hundred years later, claim that soc. sciences has helped to strengthen the 'status quo' rather than change it!! That is why we have the yet marginal theories of critical psychology, critical realism, social semiotics, social subjectivity, action theory, post autistic economics, pattern language... Of course that KM also shares this responsibility: do we have KM to guarantee that whoever is in power stays there or else do we want to develop into more participative, diverse, open and challenging forms of organisation?... Yes, i told you, lots and lots to say here... Thanks again CIndy and sorry for thsi delay!!
Foucault and "deconstruction"
It is true Angela's text tells us a lot about a number of fundamental questions one should be aware of when embarking on any kind of KM approach. In fact it is mainly the issue of thinking about thinking --which some resent as just an extra intellectual exercise. However since we are supposed to have long differentiated from "simple" mammals it should not be that of a challenge.
There is an urgent need in KM (as in any domain for that matter) to clearly define what we are talking about, never taking it for granted that the conclusions we have just met are "the" ones, and never hesitating to question what the preceding "laws" were. This has nothing to do with systematic contradiction and teenage rebellion, it should go without saying!
The example of Angela's reflections is the epitomy of constructive thinking through "deconstruction". Angela opens the door to Foucault, who stood as one of the best representatives of that philosophical school and who led modern analyses to the regions of complexity thinking. So we should rejoice KM can be revisited through that highly proficient intellectual grid, and we must thank Angela for giving us the opportunity to shake up the over-wired connexions between our neurons, and letting us apprehend new ways of relating things to one another.
Evolved behaviour
Hi Angela, all,
when reading "‘caring for others’ is also a form of non-altruistic behaviour, i.e. it implies the understanding that caring for others is a necessary and automatic component of individual’s own objectives in a context of high complexity" I can't help thinking of the experiments on game theory and the survival of "cooperative" behaviours vs "selfish" ones in the same environment.
If I remember correctly, the broad conclusion was that the best survival rate goes to individuals who start off by collaborating and only deny collaboration to individuals who have previously shown them non-collaboration (selfish behaviour). I think this was called "grudge-bearing collaborators" or something like that.
In a modern environment, collaboration is eminently knowledge sharing. So it seems like nature bears your hypotheses on useful (regardless of morals) behaviour.
Best regards,
Miguel
language
I struggle with (inter-cultural) language. I understand : good/bad is too black and white. Try a compass if you like to navigate. What leadership characteristics are (East) good for the whole system and impact an organisation has on the worldwide (because of what power and focus it ultimately compounds/networks)? What characteristics (South) are good for the leader's own authenticity both personal development but also relationship permissions to keep gravitating trust, contextual sustainability, and presence of good emotions all around her/his gravity. Clearly there are opposite poles to both of these questions.
Now here's the hard question. Think of say the 1000 biggest organisations on our planet. What percent of leadership is going on South versus North; & East versus West?
Arguably, which side you answer each of these questions explains more fundamentally than anything else as to whether you are happy with globalisation and all organisational systems in terms of the direction they are going or feel in people terms deeply distressed about how many human beings are being wasted by a leadership profile which isnt as open and deeply context caring as it could be. I am of the second group and would love to hear from anyone else who is so we can take a raincheck of which networks we spend our time in. I have just come back from a 48 hour therapy session convened by George Por and Peter Merry where we sat in a circle and discussed this sort of topic until we almost literally dropped. You dont have to agree with my words (and often I dont wholly agree with them because wordsmithing isnt one of my greater skills); but I can tell you these 20 people who sat in a circle are sharing with each other and anyone else interested a different community of bookmarks etc(random example - a guy who is using the net to teach in under 3 weeks people from indigenous cultures to speak esperanto because then they can share indigenous circle wisdom across all indigenous cultures and these more authentic truths/conversational cultures can then be translated so that even snobby western MBAs see they are missing a deep human sense by being over-analytical in constructing leadership rules)
These different (ELAN - Evolutionary Leadership Action Network) bookmarks (and basecamps) aim to put leadership forward on the East & South paths until it becomes not just a dream that leadership could be open, transparent , loving (even) but practised in the most humanly successful organisations of the future. You would be surprised to hear of one of the biggest hi-tech professional companies who sent a person to the founding circle of ELAN. chris wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
The Balancing Act of KM
Hello Angela,
My very first posting on KB was about the danger of KM.
Knowledge is power. Most companies wishing to retain 'knowledge' therefore reward their 'talented knowledge workers' with cash, lavish vacations, promotion, special assignments etc. As we have witnessed the past few years of the way how organizations reward thier CEOs with incredibly large sums of money. And the CEOs would reward thier 'followers', and some of the board of directors are board of directors of many companies, and they have even more important friends that would provide them with 'knowledge'...
Therefore 'knowledge' retained within a circle of 'friends and families' so to speak. And since we reward 'knowledge' with better assignments and promotion, therefore new knowledge accummulates and remains in the hands of the same old group of people. They become more and more knowledgable, at the same time hardly any 'new knowledge' is added to the rest of the company. Knowledge gradually depleted from the rest of the company (dramatized a bit to make the story more interesting). The company becoming more and more dependant on a handful of the so called 'knowledge workers'.
Transfer this scenario to our society at large. We see the same old pattern repeating. And it is getting worse as technologies are getting better. We would have knowledge workers where thier lives are getting better and better, but what shall we do with people that do not fit in the catagory of 'knowledge workers'? They depends on things and services produce by the 'knowledge workers'. Since it is kind of 'monopoly', price control and fixing is very possible...
Reading some of the thinking behind PKM, I am seeing an even more scary future for the non-knowledge workers.
The more I know about KM, the more I think KM is not bringing a more equal world. Simply because KM does not include 'human natures' to its accounting. Especially selfishness and greed. Power hunger and dominations. Just to name a few.
Cindy
Good/bad is too black and white
Interpreting leadership from a good versus bad perspective is too limiting and reductive. I would rather see it as leadership-for-development so that leadeship which leads to underdevelopment or to subdevelopment would be a weak form of leadership. We always have Hitler to think about. He could be taken for a leader if by leader we imply the ability to have the 'masses' following him... but I still think that his was an extremelly poor form of leadership because it only alllowed the development of the CHOSEN ones and the rest would be killed. We don't need to go to such radical examples but I do think that it is misleading to restrict a conceptualisation of leadership to yes/no good/bad shallow moral criterion. Probably this is not at all what you meant but I do think that we should raise the issues of complexity, awareness and sensitiveness when we talk about leadership.
practices of leadership
Do we already have at knowledgeboard a thread which compares leadership as practised (intentionally or by mistake) for:
good power?
bad power?
If not, is that part of this thread's remit?
One of the most outstanding web-writers on this topic imo is Tom Heuerman at http://www.amorenaturalway.com , though I'd love to hear if anyone has a better first guide
Just a few words
Thank you Jacques, Ton, Olaf and Chris for your comments! Jacques, it is good to count with your support! Ton, I am glad that you are still inspired by philosophy! Olaf, I am keeping up with your very special points of view... And Chris, yes I agree that power is not always used for the good! But that is what we are here for, to see how/ what/ why can be improved...
thanks for putting a very interesting road in front of us
One of the mind-changing questions I heard someone raise about 5 years ago: are the world's biggest organisations a reflection of being effective/useful systems or because of power?
This is a crucial distinction. If the answer is of the second kind, then we shouldnt blindly admire and try to learn the practices of big organisations because any human historian can demonstrate that power is as often systemised to bad ends as it is to good. Indeed we shouldnt even accept without questioning that it is an organisation's duty to always try to get bigger. It will take me a while to source all the work that has been done around this question. I will try and update this post with tyhe relevant bookmarks as I re-discover them.
A second set of references I will need to dig out is those parts of complexity literature which demonstrate that an organisation can always make relationships simple and human if it systemicly loves it context and people to bits. If you go back to successful founders, they were all love of a really useful context and no complexity at least in the way that I read their stories.
c1
Ethical implications and natural social law
Hello Angela, thank you for your profound and very inspiring article. It triggered me to write this,which I couldn't post here due to size limitations. I hope your article will set off many interesting conversations!
Just in: my weekend reading!
Hi Angela,
Thanks for this! I know what I will be reading this weekend, and reflecting on.
Best,
Ton
Yes, let us not forget about philosophy and the philosophical approach
Some readers will be happy to be reminded of some of Michel Foucault's (French philosopher, 1926-1984) theories when going through this text. Those who are not so familiar with the works of the philosopher will be satisfied too with the hints brought to us by Angela Nobre concerning the major themes of his production. The linking of KM issues and the analyses of power are here brought to an interesting level of subtlety. A great encouragement to always go below the surface of things!
your are a brave man! well done
Thank you Chris for your challenging comments! It looks like the setting of a research agenda for a huge academic department! You are a brave man.
I feel overwhelmed by so much hard thinking and cannot give you back any great idea apart from : keep going! You'll be listen to and what you say is important. We do have to work on how to divide this 'research agenda' into chewable chuncks but that it another story.
thanks again
Angela