The organizational mind: A comprehensive framework for the intelligent organization

Transcription

1 The organizational mind: A comprehensive framework for the intelligent organization Isabel Ramos Information System Department University of Minho Guimarães, Portugal iramos@dsi.uminho.pt Abstract: The paper describes an overall view of the organizational mind concept. Our claim is that this concept may become a sound theoretical basis for the development of an useful framework to assist the study of how collective experience is understood and memorized, highlighting the events and objects that organizations choose to pay attention to. It assists also in understanding the language elements upon which the organizational experience is constructed and what processes enable organizations to reason about that experience. However, this is a very complex concept that cannot be tackled in only one research project but in several multidisciplinary and focussed projects. The first research project is starting at the Information Department of the University of Minho (Portugal) and it focuses on one of the aspects of the organizational mind: the self- and metarepresentation capabilities of the organization. Keywords: knowledge management, organizational mind, organizational intelligence, IT support 1. Introduction The paper builds upon current knowledge about the human mind to present the concept of the organizational mind emerging from the action and interaction of multiple organizational aspects (i. e., people, work arrangements, resources, and technology) and the social constructions that result from the human action and interaction, such as (i) norms, (ii) rules and procedures, (iii) meanings and values, (iv) culture, (v) organizational politics, (vi) management practices and initiatives, (vii) ethics, (viii) goals and objectives, and (ix) the use of information systems and technology. These elements are analyzed in order to detail the organizational equivalent to the mental processes of perception, cognition, emotion, and consciousness. These organizational processes are presented in their human and technological dimensions and are then integrated to provide a framework for explaining and intervening in the organizational capabilities of feeling, learning, deciding, and acting intelligently and creatively. The process of knowledge management (KM) is elaborated in this paper as the concern for the health of the organizational mind and action, resulting in improved organizational capabilities of learning, intelligent decision and behaviour, creativity, and feeling. The KM field is a multidisciplinary field that draws from established fields such as Organizational Theory, Management Science, Psychology, Sociology of Knowledge, Information, and Computer Science. As such, the field brings in a variety of theories, paradigms, methodologies, technologies, and tools that are often addressed separately, making it difficult to get holistic and integrated views of the role that KM and information technology play in the support of organizational survival and well-being. The concept of organizational mind may therefore be a powerful concept for the study of organizations, for the planning and implementation of KM initiatives, and for exploiting the use of information technology in organizations, not only to improve their ability for survival but also to guide the search for the collective well-being. Section 2 of this paper presents the key aspects of the human mind and makes the bridge to the key aspects of the organizational mind. Section 3 presents an analysis of the support that some applications provide to organizational mind processes. Future research being carried out to develop the organizational mind framework and corresponding methodological and technological tools is provided in the Conclusions section of the paper. 1

2 2. The organizational mind framework Terms such as knowledge management, organizational memory and identity, business intelligence, and organizational learning are becoming usual in the discourse of the social and organizational sciences. Each presupposes a parallel between the human mind and the organizational capability of intelligent manipulation of knowledge to support the planning and execution of new and better solutions to problems concerning survival and well-being. However, when the literature in the fields conveyed by those terms is analyzed, this parallel is lost in favour of sociological, economic, and technological views, often explored separately. This paper is a first exploration of the organizational mind concept that we are starting to develop and operationalize at University of Minho, by defining the organizational equivalent to human perception, cognition, emotion, and consciousness. This concept will relate organizational aspects such as structure, human resources management, power, culture, strategy, change management, leadership, innovation, learning, and IT applications. The interconnection of all these aspects may lead to an integrated view of distributed perception, cognition, emotion, and consciousness in organizations. This approach does not imply reifying the organizational mind but to use those human-mind-centered concepts metaphorically to establish the basis for an explanation of how the organization s members collectively gather information from the environment and from its interior, interpret it, build an image of the organization as a whole, recognize the organization s problems and needs, project its action and construct its future. 2.1 Human mind According to scientific knowledge produced in the neurosciences (e.g., Damásio 1999; Damásio 2003; Greenfield 2000; Churchland 2002), the human mind emerges from the brain devices that support the mind processes of: Perception. This mental process enables human beings to know external objects and events, events happening inside the body, mental objects such as thoughts and modes of thinking, and of the self in relation to perceived physical or mental objects. Cognition. This mental process includes aspects such as vigil, production of thoughts, attention, memory, language, and reason. Emotion. This mental process is built from simple and automatic responses to competent stimuli. Emotions are specific repertoires of action that help an individual to achieve the circumstances conducive to survival and well-being. Consciousness. This mental process enables the knowing of an object or action that can be ascribed to the self. The nuclear consciousness provides the individual with a sense of the self, the now, and the here. The extended consciousness provides a complex sense of self, corresponding to an individual s identity. Consciousness permits also the knowledge of an individual s history, and his or her past and anticipated future, and enables him or her to stay alert to the surrounding world. In conjunction, these mental processes give rise to mental phenomena such as: Feelings. Mental images that assist in making choices regarding self-preservation. They are the expression of emotions at the mind level. Feelings help us to solve non-standard problems involving creativity, judgment, and decision-making, requiring the display and manipulation of vast amounts of knowledge. Feelings can help or impede learning and recall. Learning. The construction of new knowledge about the world that surrounds an individual and her or his role in that world, and about the self and its own potential for action and interaction. It is intimately related with life experience. Learning changes the way the individual perceives, thinks, and behaves in order to accommodate new experiences. Intelligence. The capacity to manipulate knowledge for the planning and execution of new answers to any problem perceived as endangering survival or well-being. Creativity. The capacity to produce new ideas and new things. It is rooted in the cognitive functions of memory, reason, and language and is informed by the revelations of consciousness.

3 Isabel Ramos 2.2 Organizational mind One of the earliest references to the term organizational mind is provided by Ian Mitroff, in his book Stakeholders of the Organizational Mind (Mitroff 1983). The organizational mind is equated with the collective thinking of organizational managers and the consequential management and organizing practices. In his book, Mitroff relates the organizational types with the personality types and ego states of top managers. Other authors have related the concept of organizational mind with a shared understanding of strategic problems, competitive conditions, and the internal and external environments they face (Schwenk 1995). In general, this initial view of the organizational mind presents it as the global information processing system of the organization, which includes human and technological processors which access, transform and deliver information from a variety of perspectives. This initial view has evolved by integrating important insights from the fields of psychology and social constructionism. Weick and Roberts (Weick and Roberts 1993) state that the heedful interactions between its members generate the collective mind of an organization. In order to be effective, newcomers must be socialized into the collective mind. The collective mind emerges from the joint production of thoughts (cognition) in the process of heedful action and interaction. This view brought to consideration organizational mindfulness, considered important to organizational learning (Levinthal and Rerup 2004; Pawlowsky 2001). Organizational mindfulness is local and situated, involves thinking in real time and is simultaneous with the execution of action. Thus, it involves both action and cognition. Organizational mindfulness enables the organization, as a whole, to reveal new opportunities in the ongoing activity and keep its action close to the defined plans and expectations. Another view on the organizational mind emerged from the claims of complex systems theory (Hoogerwerf and Poorthuis 2002). The organization is seen as a self-organizing, adaptive, nonlinear, and complex system showing the following properties (Eijnatten and Simonse 1999): Connectivity: resources, human and non-human, are interconnected; managers should think global and act locally. Indeterminacy: although reality abides the law of causation, knowledge of the effect of any particular cause is an approximation and never a fact that can be known in advance; the how of change must be constructed as the change unfolds. Dissipation: reality is the product and the framework of thinking, action and interaction. It is in permanent motion. Emergence: Thinking, action, and interaction are continuously changing and producing emergent phenomena; managers should let go of command and control. Consciousness: it is an emergent phenomenon in organizations and comprises the collective consciousness of every individual within the bounds of the organization. The above properties support the emergence of organizational mind. The organizational mind is ever in motion, conceiving shared thoughts and feelings, shaping desires, assembling plans, evaluating experience, interpreting perceptions, and initiating actions. Leadership is a discretionary role open for every employee rather than a fixed privilege of a particular hierarchical position in the organization. The chaordic view of the organizational mind is often criticized for its lack of empirical research and for not providing an useful operationalization of the theoretical claims. Another critic is that there is a tendency to reify the organizational mind, seeking the social mechanisms that make emerge a new being or a meta-consciousness independent from the individual consciousnesses that give rise to it. These two theoretical views of the organizational mind advance some important explanations for collective and distributed cognition and action in organizations, but they have not been successful in providing methodological tools to study the organizational mind s functioning or improving its intelligence, learning ability or creativity. We consider that using the recent knowledge on the human mind developed in the Neurosciences may provide those methodological tools. The next paragraphs of this section offer a first glance on the concepts that can be used to develop the organizational mind concept. This concept can then be used to develop the necessary tools to diagnose eventual dysfunctions in the organizational mind and to improve its intelligence. Some of the ideas here

4 expressed are already being explored separately by some authors (Sen 2003; Ambler and Styles 2002; Gibson 2001). The organizational mind comprises processes and phenomena corresponding to those found in the human mind. Obviously these processes and phenomena should be sought at an organizational macro level and not at the level of the individuals and machines that are the acting elements of the organization. It is our expectation that the organizational mind constitutes an interesting and useful framework to assist the study of how collective experience is understood and memorized, highlighting the events and objects that organizations choose to pay attention to. It assists also in understanding the language elements upon which the organizational experience is constructed and what processes enable organizations to reason about that experience. By constructing representations about itself and its environment, an organization, as a collective self, creates a sense of meaning about the world and its action in that same world. The organizational mind framework can be used to improve an organization s capabilities for survival and also to guide its members search for their collective wellbeing. Using the organizational mind framework, researchers and managers are able to evaluate an organization s mind capabilities such as: intelligence how its members use the available knowledge to plan and implement solutions to problems and environmental challenges, ensuring the organization s survival and wellbeing; learning ability how their members collectively accommodate new experience by changing the way they perceive, think and behave; creativity the organizations capability to produce new ideas and new things to ensure a dynamic adaptation to the internal and environmental challenges and opportunities. The organizational mind metaphor leads to the search of organizational behaviour that supports the view that an organization acts as a coherent whole and is the cause for the emergence of a sense of a collective self that enables the organization to: control its reactions to environmental stimuli and to hold a sense a collective self interacting with external entities; monitor what is happening in its interior and exterior; envisage its future and develop courses of action to construct the envisaged future; evaluate the effectiveness of its processes and structure; appraise its internal, financial, and market well-being; develop a sense of responsibility towards the environment and society. As in humans, these capabilities demand that an organization be capable of forming and using representations of itself and of the relevant external entities with which it interacts (selfrepresentations), and other representations resulting from these (meta-representations). Such representations address: i. what is perceived, moment-by-moment, as happening in its internal and external environments; ii. its envisaged future; iii. its past experience; iv. its structure, causal, and process models of its internal workings; v. structure, causal and process models of its social and economic environment; vi. presumed image held by relevant stakeholders about it. 3. Information Technology and the construction of the organizational mind IT applications constitute one of the key components of the organizational mind. This section provides a first approach to the IT s role in leveraging the organizational abilities to perceive, monitor, remember, react, learn, project the future and bring the envisaged future to reality. Table 1 presents some examples of types of IT applications and the mind processes they support. For the purposes of this paper, the mind processes of the organization are defined as:

5 Isabel Ramos 1. Perception: collective and distributed ability to capture and interpret information from the organizational environment; 2. Monitoring: collective and distributed ability to monitor the internal workings of the organization, moment-by-moment; 3. Memory: collective and distributed, localized and transactional ability to store, retrieve and deliver information and knowledge; 4. Reaction: collective and distributed ability to enact automatic responses to environmental stimuli; 5. Thought production and Reason: collective and distributed ability to reconstruct experiences, project the future, use structural, process and causal models to preview the consequences of decisions and to plan for action. 6. Consciousness : collective and distribute sense of a collective self with an identity, past history and anticipated future. This sense of a collective self enables the individual members adhere or reject organizational values and culture. The above processes are derived from the ones attributed to the human mind (please, see section 2.1). The definitions provided for the organizational mind processes are supported by research in organizational sciences and psychology (Flores, 1998; Ford and Harding, 2004;Giere and Moffat, 2003; Goleman, 1998; Kahneman, 2002; Nauta et al., 2002; Palmer and Hardy, 2000; Ocasio, 1997; Powell et al., 2004; Raz, 2002; Simon, 1997; Simon, 2002; Taylor, 1999; Tsoukas, 1996). The IT applications of Table 1 was chosen taking into account the functionality offered by standard packages and the ability of those applications to meet the information, communication, and action/interaction support needs implied in the definitions of the organizational mind processes (Fraidin, 2004; Lilley et al, 2004; Nevo and Wand, 2004; Simon, 1990; Vaast and Walsham, 2005). Table 1: IT applications that support organizational mind processes Perception Monitoring Memory Reaction Reason Consciousness CRM, SRM ERP Collaborative Data Warehouses Data Mining E-Learning Planning Risk Mng Knowledge Mapping Document Mng Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) systems support the collective ability to capture, interpret and react to changes in the behaviour of customers and suppliers. By helping to define the organizational boundaries and to clarify the relationships the

6 organization intends to keep with external entities, these systems also support the emergence of the sense of a collective self. Enterprise Resource Planning support the institutionalization of practices and structures, the control of internal processes and information, and the monitoring of organizational performance. Thus, these systems support the moment-by-moment monitoring of the internal environment of an organization and shape its experience. By facilitating the integration of business processes, these systems also contribute to the emergence of a collective self. Collaborative support the joint decision and carrying out of tasks. These systems leverage the ability of the group to reason about the constraints affecting decisions and tasks. By facilitating the communication between the group members, these systems create the conditions for the emergence of the sense of a collective self. Data Warehouses support organizational memory. Data mining tools permit the reasoning about the past experience of an organization and the definition of a rapid reply to the detected problems and opportunities detected in that experience. elearning systems help improve the perception and reason abilities of the organization, thus leading to an improved ability to plan future action. Planning help organizational members in the task of envisaging the future and plan the action to achieve defined goals and objectives. The definition and dissemination of long term goals and objectives for the organization help sustaining the sense of a collective self. Risk Management help keeping track of risks that may prevent the organization of achieving its objectives and goals. These systems also help defining the necessary action to avoid those risks. Knowledge Mapping support organizational memory. These systems facilitate the location of knowledge sources in the organization and, in this way, may improve the distributed reason ability of the organization and the awareness of a collective self. Finally, Document Management support the organizational memory. By storing and keeping documents easily accessible, these systems also support the sense of a collective self for the organization. The systems categories included in the table were chosen for their widespread use, facilitating the understanding of their implication in the supporting of the different organizational mind processes that constitute the table s columns. In our future work, we intend to develop a systematic mapping of the information systems categories with the organizational mind processes they support. The table also emphasizes the possibility of an organization having several, possibly conflicting, IT support for the same mind process. In this way, the organizational mind concept may become a solid theoretical basis for the development of a method to diagnose dysfunctions in the mind processes of the organization. Our research will also present new ways of using current IT to leverage the organizational mind processes, therefore improving the collective capabilities of problem solving, decision making, adaptation to changing conditions, and construction of a common future. 4. Conclusions This paper describes, in very general terms, the concept of organizational mind. This description emerged from the recent neurosciences knowledge on the human mind used as a guiding metaphor. This concept will be at the root of a broad framework that aims at meeting the challenge of integrating theories and tools from different disciplines to create a comprehensive framework for studying and improving the intelligence, learning ability, and creativity of an organization as a collective self that must generate consistent and innovative thinking and action to meet the challenges and opportunities of the knowledge-based economy. The organizational mind framework will integrate theories and

7 Isabel Ramos tools from organizational science, information systems, management science, psychology and sociology, anchored in the insights provided by the human mind metaphor. However, this is a very complex concept that cannot be tackled in only one research project but in several multidisciplinary and focussed projects. The first project is just starting and it focuses on one of the aspects of the organizational mind: the self- and meta- representation capabilities of the organization. We are assuming that such organizational capabilities are responsible for the emergence of the sense of a collective self which is of key importance for the ability of the organization to act coherently and intelligently in response to internal or external threats to its survival and well-being. In our research at the Information Department of the University of Minho (Portugal), we intend to verify empirically that it is possible to define the requirements of healthy representational capabilities for the organization and that disturbance in these capabilities may lead to identity dysfunctions that negatively affect the organization s performance. The objectives of the project are: 1. To define the concepts of organizational self-representation capability and organizational meta-representation capability, using the human capability for selfrepresentation and meta-representation as the supporting metaphor. 2. To develop a schema connecting the key elements of both concepts. 3. To identify key performance indicators to measure the self- and meta-representation capabilities of the organization. 4. To define a model linking the representational capabilities of the organization to the emergence of the organizational identity. 5. To create a method and a companion computer based tool to assist (a) the diagnosis of potential identity dysfunctions related with problems in the representational capabilities of the organization, and (b) the planning of effective interventions to reduce the diagnosed dysfunctions. 6. To suggest new directions for the future implementation of cognitive systems so that they incorporate the aspects that the project advances as important for the well-being of organizations. For this project, we formed a multidisciplinary team of specialists from the fields of Management, Cognitive Sciences, and Information and intend to bring in consultants from other disciplinary fields to help us defining the relevant concepts, their interrelations and their organizational operationalizations. References Ambler, T. and C. Styles (2002). Connecting Firm-level Learning with Performance, Center for Marketing, London Business School. Churchland, P. S. (2002). Self-representation in nervous systems. Science 296: Damásio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York, Harcourt Brace. Damásio, A. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. London, William Heinemann. Eijnatten, F. M. V. and L. W. L. Simonse (1999). Organizing for Creativity, Quality and Speed in Product Creation Processes. Quality And Reliability Engineering International 15: Flores, F. (1998). The leaders of the future. Beyond calculation: the next fifty years of computing. P. J. Denning and R. M. Metcalfe. New York, Cpernicus - Springer-Verlag. Ford, J. and N. Harding (2004). We Went Looking for an Organization but Could Find Only the Metaphysics of its Presence. Sociology 38(4): Fraidin, S. N. (2004). When is one head better than two? Interdependent information in group decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 93:

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