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guest editor
Wisdom
beyond
information:
learning the
difference
between data
and meaning
A plea for management realism and data modesty, by guest editor rik maes
hinking about my contribution to Convergence, not thousands of textbooks on information systems have
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convergence vol 7 no 1
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guest editor
marketable asset supported by myriads of systems, but equally implicates emotional involvement. Confusion
knowledge bases, business intelligence software and and astonishment, curses in the church of the detached
other IT-based artefacts. Typically, management is manager, are in fact useful mechanisms for enriching our
reduced to decision-making based on representations of insight. Insight is the result of our full being-in-the-world.
representations: the “spreadsheet manager”, no more Involved management, amplifying the variability of
balanced than his score card, considers his model of the organisation, is the only success strategy in a world
reality as reality itself, instead of considering it as a becoming more and more convoluted. Paradoxically,
model for reality. organisations facing increasing external and internal
One would think that, almost three decades after complexity tend to fall back to more complex
Kent’s original publication, people would be aware of this management information systems instead of to more
pitfall. Yet the recent recession of western economy has
given birth to a whole breed of calculating managers Too many textbooks on information
eagerly engaging in a tacit conspiracy with pigheaded IS
missionaries. Management control is their belief,
systems are filled with the claptrap which
outsourcing of IT their sedative, standardisation via holds that data is the source of wisdom
megalomanic ERP implementations their preferred tool
and continuous improvement their wildest dream. In managerial involvement. These systems add to the
these organisations, IT has become an instrument of further separation of thinking from doing: their
control instead of a permanent motor of innovation. complexity is a measure for the distance a manager has
Is there an alternative? Reality itself is. In real life, to reality. After all, “the ultimate success of management
information is not something we receive from outside, but information systems is not in the sophistication of the
meaning we assign ourselves to our observations of the representational system, the computerised information
2
world-as-it-is. Maturana and Varela have proven that the system, but in the manager’s involvement in the world.
ability to assign meaning is an inherent attribute of any There is no way to substitute representation for
non-trivial system; evil-minded people pretend that this is involvement.” (Introna3, p169)
simultaneously the very proof of the triviality of detached Organisations are impatiently in search of a new
“spreadsheet managers”. Information is about identity in an accelerating world. They are operating in
interpretation, not about representation; it is intrinsically an environment where their customers know more about
contextual and interpretative and so are data as solidified them then they do themselves, no matter how
information. Ultimately, information is not in the sophisticated their information systems are. They
transformation of data, but in our continuously adapted desperately need involved managers really
understanding of the real world: “We do not need more understanding the world instead of blaming their failing
data; we need a more primordial understanding, more information systems. Paraphrasing Karl Weick in Boland
3
thinking.” (Introna , p179) and Collopy4, such managers remember the things seen
This understanding, by definition, deals with the full and the things felt, rather than the name of these things.
complexity, ambiguity, incompleteness and other In the end, managing is about sense-making. Aren’t
“annoying” features of reality Bill Kent was referring to we all managers?
as the true issues of information processing.
Knowledge based on this reading of information has References:
nothing to do with the mechanistic world view as 1. Kent, W. Data and Reality. North Holland, 1978 (reprinted by 1st Books, 1998).
2. Maturana, H and Varela, F. TheTree of Knowledge. Shambala, 1992.
expressed in the technical knowledge management
3. Introna, L. Management, Information and Power. MacMillan, 1997.
literature. Knowledge is not an asset, but an insight. 4. Boland, RJ Jr and Collopy, F (eds). Managing as Designing. Stanford Business
Adjusting this insight is not a purely intellectual exercise, Books, 2004.
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convergence vol 7 no 1