>From: "Jonas, Harry S" <JonasHS@corning.com>
>Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 11:18:00 -0400 (EDT)
>Subject: Intellectual Capital and Reintro -- Hank Jonas LO7961
>>>>>>Only key portions of this message are included<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>The subject is intellectual capital. Fortune magazine did an article on it
>in 1994 and there was a lot of interest in the concept, particularly in some
>U.S. companies, and others in Canada and Sweden. The topic has several
>meanings, from intellectual property rights to programs for assuring
>retention of human capital.
>I'm happy to send any readers copies of our proposal, but my real questions
>are:
> - Is intellectual capital still a lively topic, or just a passing fad
>(shades of "Is LO a passing fad?")? If the latter, what have we learned (if
>anything) by dabbling in this area?
> - If companies are still talking about it, have they developed any creative,
>data-based retention strategies for their "value creators"? Have these
>strategies generalized to larger populations?
> - Are the value incongruities mentioned above issues in the further
>development of the intellectual capital concept? What have we missed?
>- --
This topic is of special interest to me given my current research emphasis
on organizations as knowledge creating systems.
Here are some thoughts -- related to the above questions -- listed in no
particular order. The objective of this response is not to provide
any specific answers, however some of the following thoughts seem to have
direct and indirect implications for the issue(s) at stake.
IMHO, the issue of intellectual capital is alive and kicking, there have
been several articles on the issue [under names such as "intellectual
capital" and "intangible assets"]. Specifically, Fortune magazine issues
in 1995 and 1996 have carried articles on this topic. Further, this topic
has been one of the key centerpieces of the whole issue of 'knowledge
management' that is gathering steam in several domains including MIS
(Management Information Systems). Some of these more recent articles
are accessible from the following URL:
http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/OrgLrng.htm
In case one is interested in the issue of Knowledge Management, one can
check out their archived table of contents for 1995 at
The specific issues of interest are the July and November issues, although
Tom Davenport's [almost] regular feature is generally related to this topic.
Incidentally, the focus of most Western knowledge management related efforts
have been primarily geared towards the mechanistic aspect, i.e. making
machines more intelligent. Some recent work related to Neural Networks
and Expert Systems is in the same line. However, the emphasis on the
humanistic aspects of knowledge-creation seems to be getting stronger.
Recent works of authors such as Pfeffer and Bennis [in the 'Competitive
Advantage through People' stream] appear to fall in this category. Also,
some recent articles by Soshana Zuboff [of "informating" fame], and
Bartlett and Ghoshal [in Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business
Review] seem to fall within this category. The major theme of most of
these articles may be interpreted as the new version of earlier (1950s-70s)
works by authors such as March (technologies of 'foolishness' /
'playfulness'), Hedberg & Jonson (Organizations as 'tents', and
'semi-confusing information systems').
Even most 'new' themes such as Reengineering are assuming the above
notion -- in the garb of 'empowerment' - as a fundamental basis for
their implementation.
Several issues that revolve around concepts such as 'creativity' or
'discontinuous strategies' -- that are needed for dynamically discontinuous
change (Nadler et al. 1995, Huber & Glick 1993) -- in one form or
another assume the 'intellectual capital' or 'intangible assets' as
an enabler. However, in the Decartesian tradition, the emphasis on
rational and deterministic prediction and measurement of organizational
initiatives has resulted in a mechanistic orientation. The search for
the rational and deterministic attributes has apparently resulted in
a more mechanistic approach to knowledge creation and management, even
though organizations are realizing the contradictions inherent in
following this approach.
An approach that is more in line with the humanistic [and less mechanistic]
orientation to the development of intellectual capital is outlined in
the book 'The Knowledge-Creating Company' (1995) by Nonaka and Takeuchi.
Their concepts of knowledge creation are based on the notions of
'strategic equivocality' and 'interpretive equivocality' that could
facilitate the Hegelian and Kantian inquiry (Churchman 1969, Mason &
Mitroff 1973). The key theme is to prevent premature convergence of
inquiry by facilitating multiple, and often contradictory, interpretations.
This notion is also in line with Senge's 'dialogue' in which the
focus is on surfacing different assumptions underlying a specific issue.
The gist of the above message is: as future is more unpredictable and
discontinuous, organizations would need to rely more upon discontinuous
strategies that are enabled by 'intellectual capital' embedded in their
human resources. However, the greatest challenge is in unleashing the
full force of human creativity that is buried within the traditional
command and control based single-looped organizational systems.
The above discussion is based partly on theory and partly on conjecture;
any contradictory (Hegelian) / complementary (Kantian) views are welcome.
Cheers!
Yogesh Malhotra
-- Yogesh Malhotra E-Mail: malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu Editor/Publisher, A Business Researcher's Interests http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/interest.htmlLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>