On June the 2nd and 3rd the first of a series of IKM interactive sessions was held with the information managers  of 11 Organisations working in Francophone Africa. The workshop in Dakar, Senegal, was hosted by CODESRIA at the AUF Campus Numérique.

The meeting focused on the use of new opportunities provided by the Internet and Web2.0 as well as on  the obstacles to publishing, promoting, aggregating and finding  African research outputs. The participants worked together on a wiki platform where they could get access to a series  of modules and provide feedback. The modules examined which new approaches showed promise both for searching , dissemination and promotion.
In the video below Benoît Diouf, a University librarian in Saint-Louis de Senegal, talks about his expectations of the workshop:

After the workshop  Benoît reports in this blogpost about the  outcomes.

Although the workshop was practical with an emphasis on hands-on work very lively discusses emerged, both spontaneously and because they were planned in the program.

Some of the key findings included:

1. The bias produced by Google’s PageRank does not favour many of the research institutes represented at the meeting. Instead it puts emphasis on publications by  larger international bodies.

2.  Other scientific  search engines (Scirus, Pubmed, Scholar) do not index much of the research material published on the web. More active steps can and should  be taken to ensure these indexes and sources like Google books include African research. One of those steps is digitization of existing resources.

3. For delivery and creation of information one needs to take into account the realities of developing countries such as limited access to computers and the net. Paper and offline version of products are necessary to avoid excluding people.

4. There was much concern about the quality of information. It is necessary to develop new measures for this quality in an electronic environment.

5. African scientists have long been deprived of access to relevant resources. Access has been improved recently but these opportunities will not be used to their full potential unless they become part of the daily way of working. There is an urgent need for capacity building, both for information professionals and scientists. Information literacy should be part of curricula.

6. Intellectual property rights are an important issue in this context. There are doubts what one can do with the information provided by others (and for that reason it is sometimes decided not to use it). Likewise it is unclear what others can do with the information that one provides.

7.  Folksonomies and traditional controlled vocabularies were discussed extensively as approaches to make information easier to be found.

[We will extend this post when more materials and videos become available]

Yesterday afternoon, together with a Context colleague Peter Das, I went to a knowledge cafe (kennis cafe) on the measurement of knowledge management. It was organised by the Centre for Research in Intellectual Capital (Kenniskring) of InHolland University for Applied Sciences. There were two presentations: one of a research project by Guy Mestrini to measure the value creation  in Fokker Stork; and another by Christiaan Stam on different approaches to measuring knowledge processes.  Both of these were very interesting and were followed by a world cafe to discuss the main issue: how to measure knowledge management initiatives.

For Peter and I, it was very interesting to have the opportunity to interact with colleagues from the private sector. And one of the most notable observations we made was that many knowledge managers seem to be struggling with attitudes and behaviours of individual knowledge workers: “experts want to keep their knowledge to themselves”, “sharing is not taking place”, and “competition stops people sharing knowledge”.  This seems to be in striking contrast to the development sector where, sharing via knowledge networks and communities of practice, is really taking place, although limited by time pressures and other practicalities.

When I mentioned this stark difference between sectors, the reaction of the other participants was  “Oh, it’s because your sector is non-profit…” but I wondered if there is not a deeper explanation and went further with my probing. I came to the conclusion that the difference is that many development organisations are seriously committed to becoming learning organisations: without organisational learning, they can’t do better development. This commitment takes, of course, various forms, but there is usually a general agreement that it is necessary. Although I am, of course, making generalisations, this appears to be in stark contrast to the situation in the private sector where there seems to be the rhetoric of the learning organisation but that commitment of management does not always carry through: in good times, there is no need to change, and in bad times the resources aren’t there. I think that another difference is the common understanding within development – despite natural organisational rivalries and a host of other impediments – that we are all working towards the same objective, and the same humanitarian objective at that.

Kindly note that I am here not trying to bad-mouth my fellow participants here: they were all very committed and are grappling with the same issues. When I explained about IKM Emergent, and told that it was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one participant reacted:

Oh, there is commitment to knowledge management at the top, no wonder knowledge management is more accepted!

The date is set: 5 October 2009, in back to back with the annual KM4DEV event, the first cobbles on the road to a francophone community of practice on learning for development will be paved, in Brussels the modern Babel tower!

The objectives are two-fold:
- to introduce the IKM Emergent discourse in the francophone arena;
- to explore the possibilities of developing a community of practice on learning for development.

There are a couple of very interesting aspects around this double bill: a francophone community of practice could potentially emerge out of the discussion, even though the ever shardy question of funding remains unclear so far; it will be an excellent opportunity to explore the discourse around learning and KM among francophones and find out how the francophone and anglophone communities could complement each other – discussing different topics in different ways – and establish bridges between them;

The question for me a) what is really driving the francophone learning agenda (if there is such a thing in the first place) and b) whether francophones and anglophones can indeed have meaningful joint group discussions.

I obviously think it’s important and necessary but our work in West Africa shows that it is a real challenge to stimulate learning and sharing across languages – though perhaps for other reasons in that region such as administrative differences making experiences very difficult to compare. As for the first question, it comes from a lot of doubts I have had regarding the way quite a few francophones seem to frame the concepts of learning and knowledge management. A discussion that took place in 2007 about this on the KM4DEV mailing list is briefly referred to in Julie Ferguson et. al.’s meta review and scoping study of knowledge management for development (See pp. 28 and beyond).

Multiple knowledges, multiple languages: cacophony or symphony?

At any rate, I cannot wait to start this and hope that the results will exceed my expectations. With a Spanish-speaking community of practice in shaping in the KM4DEV community too, the ‘multiple knowledges’ that form the red thread of the IKM emergent programme are all coming to the fore. Will it be a symphony or a cacophony?

If you want to join the reflection about setting up a francophone community of practice or wish to join the discussions in October, simply let Ewen know or register and leave your details on: http://www.km4dev.org/wiki/index.php/Francophone_KM4DEV

This post was originally published on: http://km4meu.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/managing-le-savoir/

This post is to give a warm welcome to Bernike Pasveer of the European Centre for Development Policy Management who is going to be blogging with us here on The Giraffe.

This afternoon I saw in CNN how residents in Fargo, North Dakota pulled themselves together to protect their town against rising floodwaters by piling sandbags over threatened dikes.

Knowledge management (KM) is about achieving effective group action. During crisis situations — when a common threat is publicly visible and cause-and-effect relationships are known to everyone — effective group action follows easily. In complex development contexts, effective group action can happen if there is a leader who can see (better than most people can) and lead through three kinds of complexity:

• Dynamic complexity: when causes and effects are far apart in space and time, and therefore less publicly visible;

Thanks to the recommendation by a colleague, I have just been reading a paper on Linking agricultural research knowledge with action for sustainable proverty alleviation: what works? written by a group of 19 people from Harvard University and the International Livestock Research Institute. The size of the group of authors in itself seems to indicate an alternative and inclusive perspective…

The paper asks ‘What kinds of approaches and institutions, under what sorts of conditions, are most effective for harnessing scientific knowledge in support of strategies for environmentally sustainable development and poverty alleviation?’ It applies an innovative conceptual framework to a diverse set of sustainable poverty-focused projects undertaken in a variety of African and Asian countries, identifying the following strategies as key to closing gaps between knowledge and action: the importance of combining different kinds of knowledge, learning and bridging approaches; the need for strong and diverse partnerships which level the playing field; and the need to building capacity to innovate and communicate.

Although the paper’s findings are specifically focused on sustainable poverty alleviation in projects, it seems to me that it has even broader implications for development across the board. In particular, its findings with relevance to ‘multiple knowledges’, boundary actors and co-created knowledge are particularly interesting. I found this all so very interesting, I’m afraid, that it has led to a horribly long blog post, summarizing this paper. Although I hope you will really like the paper too and agree that it is worth it!

Before the summary below, here are two quotes from the conclusions:

..an explicit recognition of the need for new arenas, where partners come together to solve problems and create joint outputs, after having reached agreement as to new rules of engagement that encourage and support creativity and innovation, could greatly improve the probability of success of future projects. (p. 20)

…boundary spanning individuals and efforts are critical, and since individuals work within institutional frameworks, these need to be supportive of such work, thus we need to further explore and understand what kinds of institutional change are needed to encourage and facilitate boundary work. We also hypothesize that a lot of boundary spanning activities, behaviour and approaches can be learned. (p. 20)

The paper starts with an analysis of the the reason why the potential of science and technology (S&T) has rarely been realised in practice:

The gap between what knowledge could contribute and what it does contribute is especially acute in two areas of central importance to the challenge of environmentally sustainable development: when the benefits opf knowledge mobilisation have a significant public good component, especially a global one…  and when the source of the needed knowledge includes both local and global expertise. (p. 1)

Three main challenges are identified as to what strategies, institutions and approaches appear to increase the probability that S&T will contribute to sustainable development:

Challenge 1: Linking knowledge with action
There is a gap between research & development agendas and decision-maker needs.

…decision makers generally do not understand either the limits or the extent of what S&T has to offer and, therefore, cannot be counted on to order the right R&D; researchers do not understand the integrated, action focused needs of decision makers and, therefore, cannot be counted on to give useful advice even when decision makers are ready to listen. (p. 2)

Co-production of knowledge and the importance of boundary organisations are highlighted as a way of bridging this gap. The paper argues that co-production of knowledge by researchers and decision makers requires sustained and substantive interaction which changes what decision makers want and what researcher study. This co-production is likely to be more successful when  when facilitated by boundary or bridging organisations:

Such boundary organisations are most effective when they are subservient to neither the science nor policy communities, but rather jointly accountable to both and to the goal of successfully linking knowledge and action for sustainability. (p. 2)

Challenge 2: Integrating multiple epistemologies
A second challenge, confronting successful efforts to harness S&T for sustainability, is the integration of multiple epistemologies. This means finding ways of combining: knowledge from different scientific disciplines; knowledge centred on one scale of analysis with knowledge on other scales, for example local and global; and generalizable knowledge derived from the application of formal scientific method with locally contextualised, tacit knowledge, derived from practice:

Knowledge systems that arise from combining understanding from multiple sources, including tacit and research based, tend to be more effective. (p. 3)

Challenge 3: Facilitating adaptive learning
Paths of environmentally sustainable must be navigated – they can’t be predicted in advance - using S&T to shape interventions that are experimental, to observe and to adapt. Such adaptive learning strategies face serious challenges from typical organisational structures that reward conformity and punish error detection:

…institutions and procedures that facilitate adaptive learning capacities create safe spaces and incorporate external review. Efforts that provide institutional safe spaces encourage experimentation, protect experimenters from the consequences of failures, and reward people for learning fast rather than for being right. (p. 3)

Based on these challenges, a number of propositions were drawn up. These were then tested using the experience of  four diverse and complex projects of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The goal of this approach was to generate lessons that are broadly applicable to approaches for linking knowledge with action. These were then developed into 7 final propositions.

Propositions

1. Successful research linking knowledge with action requires the use of processes and tools that enhance efficient dialogue and cooperation between those who have or produce knowledge and the decision makers who use it, and help ensure the research is user and problem-driven. (p. 11)

2. Successful efforts to develop research linking knowledge with action generally adopt a ‘project’ orientation and organization, with dynamic leaders accountable for achieving use-driven goals and targets. They avoid the pitfall of letting ’study of the problem’ displace ‘creation of solutions’ as the research goal. (p. 12)

3. Successful research linking knowledge with action includes ‘boundary work or actions’ committed to building bridges between the research community on the one hand and the user community on the other and creating networks that allow interactions between the different users and producers. This boundary work often involves constructing informal new arenas, in which project managers can foster user-producer dialogues, joint product definition, and a systems approach free from distorting dominance by groups committed to the status quo. Defining joint ‘rules of engagement’ in the new arena that encourage mutual respect, co-creation and innovation that addresses complex problems, while recognizing that in order to implement changes, each partner is answerable, and has to return to, their institutional homes and the cultural norms, rules, constraints, etc. that go along with them, is key. (p. 14)

4. Successful programmes linking knowledge with action take a systems approach that recognizes scientific research is just one ‘piece of the puzzle’, and aims to identify and engage with key partners that can help turn co-created knowledge generated by the project/programme into action (new strategies, policies, interventions, technologies) leading to better and more sustainable livelihoods’. (p. 16)

5. Successful research efforts linking knowledge with action are designed as systems for learning rather than systems for knowing. Recognizing the difficulty of their task, such programs are frankly experimental, expecting and embracing failure in order to learn from it as quickly as possible. Success requires appropriate reward and incentive systems for risk-taking managers, funding mechanisms that enable such risk-taking, and periodic external evaluation. (p. 18)

6. Successful research linking knowledge with action must develop strategies that focus on strengthening linkages and effective patterns of interaction between organisations and individuals operating locally where impact is sought. A key role of boundary spanning work/organizations is the facilitation of processes that create strong networks and build innovation/response capacity of the system. Co-created communication strategies and boundary objects/products are key to the longevity and sustainability of project outcomes and impacts. (p.19)

7. Linking research with knowledge requires strategies to deal with the often large (and largely hidden) asymmetries of power felt by stakeholders. (p. 19)

From Iina Hellsten of the Athene Institute at the VU University, I heard about work by Loet Leydesdorf (the image on the left is ‘borrowed’ from his website and you can click on it to get to the website too) and others on the model of the Triple helix. What is the Triple helix, and why is it so interesting?

Many of us who are working to bring the domains of policy, practice and research further together in the field of development – and this is true for me personally (in my small way) as well as for, on a larger scale, IKM Emergent and the organisation, Context, international cooperation, for which I work – are fuelled by an intuitive belief that bridging the divides between the different domains can only lead to better development. But although we have had this intuitive belief but we are struggling with why this is so important. I think the metaphor of the Triple helix helps us with this…

The Triple Helix metaphor/model provides a framework to analyse the institutional dynamics between government, industry and higher education – similar to the domains of policy, practice and research in development – in order to consider innovation in a knowledge-based economy. You can read much more about the Triple helix on the website noted above. Based on a quick google, there are already some approaches which link the triple helix to development: a conference on universities in developing countries which took place in 2006, a study of sustainable knowledge-based development, and one on entrepreneurship in South Africa.

One of the things that really appeals to me about this approach – as someone with an information and doumentation background – is that science metrics, bibliometrics and citation analysis can be used to analyse the different sectors. More on this another time….

Just lately I have been hunting down quite a lot of publications, both official and grey or informal ones, and this has brought home to me, more than ever, the pressing need to preserve the documentary record of development practice. As Ewen Leborgne and I commented in a very recent paper on knowledge management strategies of organisations, many approaches to knowledge management are not fully documented:

The paper is only able to offer a glimpse of the current reality or the tip of the iceberg. This is because what is happening in organisations is not fully documented. Not only are experiences with knowledge management often not published – they remain for internal use only – where they are published, this is often in the form of grey literature which is by its nature less easily accessible and less permanent. Two initiatives which have made efforts to document what is happening in organisations: the organisational case studies collected by the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community of practice and which are available on its website and the related Knowledge Management for Development Management Journal…The importance of these two sources is reflected in the references.

As background to the paper, Ewen Leborgne and I have made an inventory of organisational case studies which we will continue to add to and which is fully accessible to all.

But this does not preclude the need for document repositories because documents on the web – particularly grey literature – is not going to remain there for ever. And without this record we can’t get better and learn from what happened before.

With this in mind, it is really great to see a number of document repositories emerging. These are often institutional or joint institutional repositories, like the combined one of ISS and Hivos, but they are also broader, development wide ones like Search4Dev which is an online library for digital documents from Dutch development organizations, an intiaitive of the Development Policy Review Network and the Information Department of the Royal Tropical Institute. Others, like Ask Source which focuses on heatlh and disability information, are taking a more sectoral approach. All of these are going to be needed if we are going to be able track the documentary record of development practice. And this applies not just to knowledge management but to all development subjects.

The Hivos Knowledge Programme now has a website. The programme was started in 2007 to address some of the complex challenges facing development: how to understand and innovate support for civil society building, how to promote pluralism in times of growing intolerance? Created on the understanding that the development sector needs new knowledge and, more specifically, appropriate knowledge to tackle specific knowledge gaps, it is based on the process of knowledge integration. Hivos, working with academic partners, is integrating knowledge on issues imperative to the work of civil society and the development sector at large.  It builds, among other things, on Hivos’ extensive work on freedom of expression and ICTs.

Many organisations have been criticised for their internal, inward looking knowledge strategies. Such criticism has come from a wide number of commentators: Kenneth King and Ben Ramalingam to name just two. The Hivos Knowledge Programme is seen by many as an example of good and innovative practice with its external orientation and attention to system-wide issues, not only Hivos’ own knowledge needs.

The Asian Productivity Organization today released a new KM e-book entitled “From Productivity to Innovation: Proceedings from the Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management.” The conference was held in New Delhi, India last 12–14 February 2008. Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon of the Philippines served as the conference rapporteur and volume editor.

You can download the e-book for free by clicking HERE.