Strategic knowledge sharing: a small-worlds perspective - Information Systems Foundations: Constructing and Criticising - page 115

10. Strategic knowledge sharing: a
small-worlds perspective
Mike Metcalfe, School of Management, University of South
Australia
Abstract
This paper is about designing knowledge sharing in wicked systems. The perspective
the paper takes is that of the self-organising 'small-worlds' phenomenon. Specifically,
this paper argues that strategic knowledge sharing can be viewed as designing small-
worlds networks so as to allow a wicked socio-technical system to self organise a coordin-
ated strategic response to unpredictable environmental changes. The evidence used
comes from the softer systems literature, biology (insect) literature and social-network
literature.
Introduction
Centralised governance of effective knowledge sharing is very difficult in times of rapid
change, especially for purposeful, information rich, socio-technical wicked systems. The
lines of communication quickly become clogged, leaders suffer information overload
and are unable to fully appreciate problems at the local level. Decentralisation of
knowledge sharing runs the risk of causing local overload, with key information not
being prioritised or depending on actors who only have experience at processing local
problems. Alternatives such as 'middle-out' (Keen, 1999) have been suggested, where
strategically informed middle level actors play a coordination role between the top and
bottom level actors. This paper explores an alternative, using the small-worlds phenomen-
on, which is itself seen as a self-organisational response that enables actors in a wicked
and dynamic socio-technical system to share knowledge and thereby generate an effective
strategic response to environmental surprises.
For those who are concerned about the deep-rooted assumption that all socio-technical
systems need a hierarchy to become organised, this paper can be seen as a small contri-
bution to the anti 'hands on' top-down view of leadership, where a 'John Wayne' figure
leads the herds of awestruck battlers through some life-threatening disaster. Rather,
leadership is seen as a socio-technical system that is capable of allowing knowledgeable
actors to interact strategically, as they see the situation, using their different experiences.
To those who have some appreciation of the very limited impact even caring 'hierarch-
ical leaders' can really have on the activities of any complex system such as regional
government, this paper may provide some improved sense of the complexity of leadership
in these dynamic situations. That said, this paper is not primarily about how to organise
a response, but rather how to envisage a self-organising socio-technical wicked system.
Examples of wicked problems in which this self-organisation design is believed to be
required include broad area wildfires, rapidly evolving environmental disasters such
as the one outlined below, blitzkrieg warfare, industry reorganisations and national IT
policy in recent times.