»Disinformation and Knowledge Quality Management«: annotations/footnotes
[1] The definition of organisation is, in this context, unspecific, and can comprise anything from the whole company to parts of it, such as individual employees, teams, IT-systems, etc.
[2] Improvement has to be defined according to the context: it can also deal with ethical questions. The economic principle (rational principle) is basically indifferent to ethics, but that does not mean that it is unethical. It implies that any system of standards can be treated economically (this is not necessarily restricted to monetary units).
Empathy as an ethical basis for action must not disregard the fact that the perception of other people's suffering can be severely impaired by qualitative blind spots.
[3] such as qualifying measures, the employment of experts, or expert advice.
[4] this also implies aspects of micro-politics.
[5] keeping one's employees disinformed, or employing only disinformed employees, increases control over the same and serves self-referential stuctures, however it does not necessarily increase an organisation's effectivity.
[6] this also implies correspondingly »deformed« communications which, at least formally, meet the demands of knowledge transfer. Brunsson refers to the »hypocrisy« in organisations which consists mainly in the disparity between talking and acting. Argyris/Schön thus differentiate between »espoused theories« and »theories in action«. Coleman stresses that rational actors conceal their interests from each other behind a »veil of ignorance«, etc.
[7] Cf. Glück, T. R.: Das letzte Tabu : Blinde Flecken, Passau: Antea, 1997.
I have characterized these basic phenomena as »Qualitative Inhibition« or »the Qualitative Prisoner's Dilemma«, cf. Glück, T. R., Blinde Flecken in der Unternehmensführung : Desinformation und Wissensqualität, Passau: Antea, 2002
[8] According to Maturana the best way to answer a question is to reformulate the question according to the questioner's level of intelligence. In this context consultants are caricatured as people who take their clients' watches in order to tell them the time.
[9] This »haircutter« is a witty metaphor for the undifferentiated application of »cookbook rules«. It stems from the following joke: There once was a man who invented an automatic haircutter. »This is the opening for the customer's head«, he explained to the patent official, »with this dial he can choose between short, medium-length or long hair, with this lever he can determine the kind of cut, and after he presses the little red button, it won't take more than five to six seconds for his chosen hairstyle to be achieved.« - »But people have different shapes of heads«, the official argued.- »Only before the procedure«, replied the inventor.
(Kirsch, W.: Strategisches Management : Die geplante Evolution von Unternehmen, München: Kirsch,1997, S. 264)
[10] The quality of management is determined by management of the quality of knowledge, especially in the field of reorganisation (fractal rationalisation as the organisational increase of intelligence, in the sense of increase of an organisation's knowledge quality, by reduction of qualitative blind spots), knowledge quality certification, integrative cultural development as an alternative to the undifferentiated installation of rigid organisational cultures, which are difficult to reform (especially in the case of Post-Merger Integration), fractal knowledge management tools, qualitative corporate & organisational government, etc.
The manager as the most important management tool, qualification, audit, coaching, etc.
