You keep on about the use of fictional stories to set examples for comparison to real situations, and every time I find it resonating a bit more.

A similar although probably well flogged example are Grimms fairy tales, which in their modern version are much tamer than pre-industrial copies. Those earlier versions were often used to scare the beejesus out of people, perhaps in the hope that they would not seek in the same directions.

Perhaps the modern versions are more conducive to drawing out empathy in listeners and so more popular, or maybe our fore bearers had hardier constitutions :).

Anyway, a good read, although it took me a few attempts to link the first block with the last. Cheers.

Hi, Dave,

Your posts on "worst practice" are fascinating. I've gotten very interested in this area and have done a bit of thinking about it.

A possibly similar idea to using archetypes is to use real stories from real people which have occurred well in the past. It seems that people can understand their mistakes (and have less emotional attachment to their failures) after time has passed. On many occasions, I've found, they are eager to share their past failings as a way to leave a legacy to others.

If those stories could be captured and assembled and indexed (and were numerous and varied enough), others who are facing similar situations can read/hear/view those stories, and learn the lessons in the same way the Sufi learn from the Mullah Nasrudin stories.

Regards,

John

Timing is everything ... Nick bontis (McMaster U. nbontis@mcmaster.ca) and Alxander Serenko (Lakehead U.) have launched a research project to examine, from a practitioner's perspective, managerial relevance of KM/IC academic works, awareness of academic works, how academic works are located and actually applied.

I think your comments in this post are highly relavent and on point.

I will be interested to see if they fall back to questionnaires and expert interviews as their research method. If they do I think it will have little value. Given that one (Bontis) comes from a reductionist background (IC measurement) I will hold judgment ....

In Eugene Bardach's "A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis," he writes that, “"Rarely will you have any confidence that some helpful-looking practice is actually the ‘best’ among all those that are addressed to the same problem." He uses the term “smart practice (see archive.epinet.org/real_media/010111/materials/Bardach.pdf),” because the activity being studied has something worth analyzing that is applicable to a problem. He writes that "a practice is ... an expression of some underlying idea -- an idea about how the actions entailed by the practice work to solve a problem or achieve a goal."
I am increasingly persuaded by the utility of narrative, i have seen the smart practice concept free people from the idea they have to use cookie cutters. Or to use one of your metaphors from the other day, it helps them see what they need to do to become a chef.

In medicine, as well as in organizational "therapy" - a strange metaphor anyway - the placebo effect makes all attempts to really understand things even more difficult.
Check http://skepdic.com/placebo.html for details (skepdic.com - the whole site and journal: highly recommended).
In other words: if many people act as if they believe in the corporate rain dance - isn't this "a" reality - even if not the best of all possible ones?

Thanks for the reference Christian. I have always loved the Skeptics Directory. Of interest are the entries on NLP and Myers Briggs

It sounds like the relevance of the research methods is an issue.

There *are* forms of research that embrace the narrative format. Most of these formats fall under the category of 'qualitative research.' This form of research can employ 'soft' data, interpretive approaches, bricolage and, non-linear logic. It can employ motifs, themes, distinctions, and ideas instead of variables. It employs different views of causality and explanation.

Qualitative research is used in social sciences and is growing in popularity. The diffculty is that there is a tension between the assumptions and logics of quantitative and qualitative research. It is a tension that is difficult to reconcile.

Ideally, cases and interviews should be qualitative, but they are often used in mixed methods research - research that employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches. It is easy to employ the method of cases and interviews while neglecting the underlying logic and approach of qualitative researc. Mixed method research requires the researcher to have the soul of an artist and the mind of a scientist - a very rare combination.

Do we need to see more qualitative approaches used in Knowledge Management research?

In the book "The Nature of Human Consciousness" edited by Robert Ornstein, Idries Shah says:

"unlike the parable, the meaning of the teaching story cannot be unravelled by ordinary intellectual methods alone. Its action is direct and certain, upon the innermost part of the human being, an action incapable of manifestation by means of emotional or intellectual apparatus...it connects with a part of the individual which cannot be reached by any other convention..."

he also says that:

"this work on the mind is correctly possible only in the living situation, when certain people are grouped together in a certain manner, and develop a certain form of rapport."

I have to agree that in my few years practicing cognitive edge methods I have found teaching stories, anecdote circles and other narrative techniques to be far more powerful than the sum of their parts.