Inquiring Organizations: Moving From Knowledge Management To Wisdom

Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom assembles into one volume a comprehensive collection of the key current thinking regarding the use of C. West Churchman's Design of Inquiring Systems as a basis for computer-based inquiring systems design and implementation. Inquiring systems are systems that go beyond knowledge management to actively inquire about their environment. While self-adaptive is an appropriate adjective for inquiring systems, they are critically different from self-adapting systems as they have evolved in the fields of computer science or artificial intelligence. Inquiring systems draw on epistemology to guide knowledge creation and organizational learning. As such, we can for the first time ever, begin to entertain the notion of support for “wise” decision-making. Readers of Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom will gain an appreciation for the role that epistemology can play in the design of the next generation of knowledge management systems: systems that focus on supporting wise decision-making processes.

James F. Courtney is professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He formerly was Tenneco Professor of Business Administration in the Information and Operations Management Department at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (with a major in Management Science) from the University of Texas at Austin (1974). His papers have appeared in several journals, including Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, the Journal of Management Information Systems, Database, Interfaces, the Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, and the Journal of Experiential Learning and Simulation. His present research interests are knowledge-based decision support systems, ethical decision making, knowledge management, inquiring (learning) organizations and sustainable economic systems.

John D. Haynes is currently a visiting professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Central Florida. He was formerly Professor and Chair in Information Systems, (Information Systems and Philosophy) Faculty of Humanities and Business at UCOL, Universal College of Learning, Palmerston North, New Zealand. Prior to his UCOL appointment in June 1998, he was at Bond University (Gold Coast, Australia) for just under nine years, where he was foundation Head of Artificial Intelligence (which he inaugurated in 1990). Also, in 1990, he jointly set up the Cognitive Science course in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Bond where he (also) lectured in Philosophy of Mind (Cognitive Science). Prior to 1989 he was Head of Department of Computing and Information Systems at the Hunter Institute of Higher Education, Newcastle, NSW, where concurrently, for eight years, he had a private practice as Managing Director of Mediware Pty Ltd (tailor-made software design! , implementation and programming for the medical profession). He has single authored two books Meaning As Perspective: the Contragram and Perspectival Thinking: for Inquiring Organisations, both published by ThisOne and Company Pty Ltd New Zealand, single edited Internet Management Issues: A Global Perspective, published by Idea Group Publishing, USA and his fourth book as joint editor with James F Courtney and David B Paradice, Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom is currently in press. His papers have appeared in (Australian) Practice Computing, The Australian and Australasian Journal of Information Systems, IEEE Computer Society Press, Information Systems Frontiers and the International Journal of Business. He has a (combined) PhD in Philosophy and Information Systems. His research interests are Strategic Management, E Commerce, the philosophy of information technology, philosophical foundations of information systems, internet management, artificial intelligence, and phenomenology.

David B. Paradice is professor and chairman of the MIS Department at Florida State University. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (Management Information Systems) from Texas Tech University. He has worked as a programmer analyst and consultant. Dr. Paradice has published numerous articles focusing on the use of computer-based systems in support of managerial problem formulation and on the influence of computer-based systems on ethical decision-making processes. His publications appear in Journal of MIS, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics, Decision Sciences, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Business Ethics, and other journals.