The Crisis of Knowing in the Age of Complexity

The crisis of our time is very much a crisis of knowledge. There is no easy way of “solving” the crisis. “Solving” the crisis demands for a real shift of mind, implying new ways of thinking and knowing about what is the real. The most important task of today, therefore, is to see and to open up a new world: a world of the possible, with its hitherto uncharted and unexplored complexity territory. For the sake of mastering complexity, understanding real complexity is urgently needed. The problem of complexity for organizations is the way organizations and companies attempt to respond to complexity. To confront and master complexity, the focus should be on the conditions of possibility, hitherto unknown. These conditions are about the possibility of triggering self-generative, self-organizing processes with potential nonlinear effects within dynamic, hyperconnected networks. These effects can be generated by the process of amplifying changes within these networks. This amplifying is about the amplifying of learning, of thinking, and of knowing. In practice, this means that new thinking in complexity is urgently needed to master the complexity involved. This approach is compared with the recent approaches advocated by big firms and companies in their embracing of complexity. This chapter shows how they are unable to discover and explore the very potential of complexity for their own Complex Organization (CO). They are very much in need to master complexity for the sake of fostering creativity, novelty, and innovation in their own organizations.

An Integrated Notation for Business Process Models

Since business processes may address complex behavioral requirements resulting from the integration of several items, i.e. tasks, business entities (also called artifacts), control flow rules and data flow rules, they need notations able to accommodate several viewpoints. This chapter proposes a notation, ARTS, aimed at integrating the traditional activity-oriented viewpoint and the artifact-oriented one. The major benefits are the unification of the control flow and the data flow and a clear representation of the choices to be carried out by the participants. The basic features are illustrated with the help of three versions of a simplified hiring process. This chapter also deals with the structure of work lists, which are the major interface between the participants and their tasks. The organization of the work lists leverages the artifacts to emphasize human choices; for this reason, the traditional linear structure is replaced with a network one, which shows the artifacts along with their states, correlations and valid options.

Semiotics is Fundamental Science

There is no way to acquire, store, and disseminate knowledge other than semiotically. Yet semiotics is hardly acknowledged in science, and not at all as science. Were it not for the fame of a few writers (Barthes, Derrida, and especially Eco), associated more with the semiotics of culture, few would even know that such a knowledge domain exists. In the age of computers, genetics, and networks—all of underlying semiotic condition—semiotics would at best qualify as pertinent to an obscure past, but insignificant for current endeavors. Gnoseologically, there is little to gain from acknowledging the shortcomings of semiotics. Epistemologically, quite a bit is at stake in grounding semiotics among the fundamental sciences. For this to come about, new interrogations become necessary: Why knowledge? What is knowledge? What kind of knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? One way or another, the answer will acknowledge semiotic processes as a necessary factor. The perspective advanced in this chapter relies on an understanding of the living, and, in particular, of the human being, that ascertains anticipation as definitory. The future is made part of the present via semiotic processes. This is significant because in the age of neurons, suggestive of brain activity and of attempts to emulate it, to distinguish between knowledge supporting human activity, embodied in new technologies, and knowledge essential to the unfolding of the living becomes very difficult.

Argument Extraction in Opinion Analysis

In this chapter, the authors present foundational elements related to argument extraction in opinion texts to design a model of how consumers develop argumentation in such texts. A second goal of the chapter is to analyze and synthesize user preferences and therefore user value systems from these arguments. The authors show that (1) that the association of an evaluative expression with a discourse structure such as an elaboration, an illustration, or a reformulation must be interpreted as an argument and (2) that the link between a consumer statement and a related argument often requires domain knowledge and dedicated inference schemas. This chapter develops a conceptual semantics of these discourse structures.

Open Source vs. Proprietary Collaborative Virtual Learning Environments

This chapter is an evaluation of the efficiency of 3D Collaborative Virtual Learning Environments to facilitate the implementation of collaborative learning activities. Firstly, there is a presentation of the state of the art regarding open source as well as proprietary platforms. Afterwards, the use of a case study reveals issues concerning the suitability of open source Collaborative Virtual Learning Environments, rationalizing the choice of executing a collaborative learning scenario in Second Life. The specific scenario is then presented culminating in evaluation results related to the appropriateness of Second Life with regards to its technical and pedagogical affordances. Finally, students' suggestions and reactions towards such a novel didactical approach are discussed.

Metadata in Serbia

This chapter discusses the usage of metadata in libraries in Serbia. So far metadata have been used for describing printed documents available for patrons in library holdings and for describing digital documents available in online repositories. Paper presents some specific aspects of metadata usage primarily in regards to automation of digital data delivery for patrons. The advent of information technologies provides librarians in Serbia, as well as their colleagues in other countries, with powerful tools to describe digital objects and interconnect them making those related digital objects effectively available for users via an emergent, more semantic web.

Product Patterns to Support Knowledge Acquisition Management

The knowledge elicitation process allows for the acquiring and transferring of knowledge. Actually, this process presents difficulties when selecting the appropriate elicitation technique. This chapter presents a classification of the elicitation techniques used in software engineering and the relationship between the elicitation techniques and some elements of knowledge management such as assets knowledge, epistemological dimension of knowledge and the knowledge creation phases. This classification provides a guideline to select a technique or a set of techniques for knowledge elicitation based on phases of Nonaka's model. Additionally, the chapter presents the use of product patterns in knowledge elicitation, and defines a product pattern as formal representation mechanism for each of the knowledge assets defined and presented in this chapter.

Current Trends and Developments, Future Requirements, and Predictions for Computer Mediated Communications and E-Collaboration

This chapter provides a revision and update to the authors' original 2012 research that discussed fifteen semi-structured interviews carried out with international industry experts and thought leaders within the computer mediated communications and e-collaboration field. The original interviews focused on 5, 10, and 15-year time frames, and sought to elicit predictions on the components and services of future platforms, as well as their likely impact on business processes and value chains. Affinity Diagramming/KJ Analysis techniques on the original interview transcripts exposed a number of key tenets that are now revisited, discussed in a current context, revised and updated in this chapter. Following a similar structure to the 2012 paper, the authors discuss the origins of the field, main providers and platforms, related software development technologies, W3C standards, video conferencing, telepresence, cloud computing and Enterprise 2.0. The authors provide a synopsis of the original interviews and have updated their conclusions and findings in light of most recent research and developments. With reference to future requirements, they have also updated their discussions on a next generation architecture proposal/model with additional insights from the authors' research work and that of others in the computer mediated communication and e-collaboration field.

The Impact of the Relationship between Gardner's Multiple Intelligence and Kolb's Learning Style

In a diverse work environment, it is important to have diverse leaders, managers, and people with different talents and intelligence in order to deal with different problems. In this case, each individual can know their own strength and weakness, and know which position works best for them. The concept of learning styles is used to describe individual differences in the way people learn. According to Kolb (1984), each person has a unique way to absorb and process experiences and information. He has identified four statistically prevalent learning styles- diverging, assimilating, converging, and accommodating. On the other hand, Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory is very helpful to recognize that people have differing aptitude in different subject areas. This chapter documents a study in which the participants consisted of 153 bachelor students of Management from the Multimedia University of Malaysia. They were given two questionnaires, one for Kolb's learning style and other for Gardner's Multiple Intelligence inventory and a correlation was conducted. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between Kolb's Learning Style and Multiple Intelligence. The relationship could be seen particularly in Abstract Conceptualization (AC) and Multiple Intelligences which were Nature, kinesthetic, music, word, interpersonal, and picture. The results also indicated that the majority of the participants are between AC and AE which means they are convergers. Having the right information for companies can be beneficial since knowing how their employees learn can lead to a diverse workplace that would have significant results on organizational structure, planning, development, and operation.

One Year Forward

With the prevalence of affordable e-Readers in the consumer marketplace and library users increasingly having access to lendable e-Books from their local library institutions, library administrators continue to have difficulty in determining the immediate and long term effect of these technologies on their organizations. This chapter attempts to provide administrators with a brief overview of the current e-Reader and e-Book technology landscape and describe trends and issues. To help Administrators better understand their library users' experiences and expectations with e-Readers and e-Books, the researcher conducted a survey of 70 individuals. This survey is a follow-up to 2012's E-Readers and E-Books in Public Libraries: Measuring Library Patron Expectations research project. Using the same survey questions, format and potential respondent pool, One Year Forward demonstrates that patrons are increasingly demanding access to e-Books and e-Readers. Library patrons are finding these services more easy to use than in the past. Users clearly see value in these services both now and in the future. The results of this research project should be difficult for any library administrator to ignore.