Strategic knowledge sharing: a small-worlds perspective - Information Systems Foundations: Constructing and Criticising - page 119

and are able to travel to numerous different communities, have a much wider choice of
cognitive influences to mimic.
In this social setting, knowledge sharing between those in immediate contact is expected
to have already largely occurred. When a crisis occurs, more than one insect knows the
same things.
Stigmergy
Camazine et al. (2001) are very cautious about the idea that colonies of insects carry in
their heads a detailed recipe or fully laid out blueprint of what, for example, a nest
should look like; a detailed vision of what the finished construction should do and be.
This is justified with the empirical evidence for how nests respond to different physical
situations. The insects build allowing for the physical conditions encountered, so every
nest is slightly different. Yet overall common design features are observable. This is not
attributed to the insects' knowledge sharing, but to their merely responding with a set
of alternatives.
Stigmergy is a term attributed by Camazine et al. (2001) to Grasse. It refers to the
mechanism whereby a swarm insect (such as an ant or bee) is stimulated to work con-
structively towards a common purpose by the presence of work in progress. The half
completed work of other similar insects is recognised as an 'event' that induces automatic
responses from those that see and recognise it. For example, an ant may see a pair of pillars
and respond by building an arch between them, without having communicated directly
with the earlier builders. This is an indirect form of knowledge sharing; an event is
driving asynchronous knowledge sharing. The human equivalent may be the response
of rescuers when a building is seen to collapse or a child is seen to be treated badly. In
place of stigmergy, Michener uses the expression, 'indirect social interactions'. In systems
management this may be called asynchronous knowledge, or sharing through design.
For insects, it may be the result of the quantity of pheromones on the half finished
building works, or it may be the physical shape that acts as the asynchronous stimulus.
It is possible to appreciate the importance of asynchronous knowledge sharing to the
running of a complex system (one that has emergent properties), such as an ant nest, by
drawing on the analogy of a modern corporation. The existence of multinational corpor-
ations has been attributed to asynchronous knowledge sharing of faxes, (e)mail and web
pages. The size of organisation that can be controlled by means of oral knowledge
sharing, is restricted. In large organisations, while oral synchronous knowledge sharing
remains very important, time zones, legal records and very detailed specification require
'written', asynchronous knowledge sharing. Nations that have developed joint synchron-
ous and asynchronous knowledge sharing have been dominant in economic and scientific
terms. At a more modest level (in insects) Camazine et al. (2001) are suggesting a more
subtle form of asynchronous social interaction, and thus motivation in the presence of
half completed tunnels, pheromone paths and other work in progress.
Given the centrality of purposeful activity to systems thinking and design (Ulrich, 2002;
Checkland, 2000), it seems necessary to mention that purposeful activity is presented
by Checkland and Ulrich as an emergent property from the large, self-conscious human
brain. This is thought to enable us to appreciate the purpose (drivers) of our actions and
stand outside ourselves. But should insects be thought to be engaged in purposeful
activity, rather than operating like parts of an alarm clock? Are insects living out genetic
drivers to bring up young and continue the gene pool? Surely any human self-organising
system would need to anticipate that the participants would be able to ask themselves
why they should act. Moreover, in human systems, language could be used to provide