The first time we ever heard about “knowledge society” was back in 1969, when Peter Drucker used these words to describe certain aspects of management, but it wasn’t until 1990 when researchers like Mansell or Stehr published their studies, that we really started to know about it. We can find the keys to Knowledge Society following the steps of what we call the Information society,heading towards a much more collaborative global world of knowledge sharing: a democratization, globalization and universalism of knowledge. But what is exactly a knowledge society? A society based on social, ethical and political progress, (the information society is based on technology), but truth is there isn’t a unique model due to cultural and linguistic diversity, which makes it a challenge for most of the cultures and countries in the world.Information is about facts and knowledge is about the interpretation of those facts, which implies diversity, but knowledge doesn’t belong to a single person, it’s a global objective asset.
Diversity and collaboration in the knowledge society
Some of us who have been abroad understand very well the inconveniences of culture shock, and further more, reversal culture shock when you go back and forth from one place to another, and no matter how used you are to certain rules, tradition and habits, you will eventually get caught up in the middle of awkward situations and misunderstandings. But diversity could be not just an advantage but an asset when we know how to manage all the mixed and rich knowledge it provides us with. Perspectivism is hard to get when all your stakeholders share the same background, training, education and referential universe. I remember the first time I had to deal with a diverse teamwork: it was two people from Asia, one from Africa, two from Europe and three from the Americas.
I must admit it was really tough sometimes for me to manage a team that, despite the language, couldn’t understand some simple rules for workflow and distribution of tasks. In the end, we all learnt to listen to each other, to see things from a diverse point of view that some of us never thought of, which provided our project with a much wider and productive perspective of the goal and achievements. Sharing your knowledge is not just about collaborating to get this done, it’s about showing others how to see things with brand new eyes and open a new door to cooperation.Integration becomes then a must: on a diverse teamwork you need to take good care of every single link in the collaborative chain to guarantee one lead having everyone on the same track. Remember that diversity and knowledge society drive to interaction and will probably turn our employees most easily into knowledge workers.
Education and knowledge society
By all means, education is key for knowledge and for societies, consequently it is transcendental to knowledge society. But, if we dig a bit into the four types of knowledge, we might find some interesting elements:
* procedural knowledge, these are the knowledge that teach us the “how”, and although it seems easy to learn, it can be a real headache when your backgrounds are such diverse as Africa and Europe.
* explicit knowledge, teach us the why, which can be even harder to make others understand.
* descriptive knowledge, here not just the referential world and background could get in the way, but the linguistic barriers: translation are not always simple and easy and we must remember that a language is not only another words to express the same things, but another way to see the world and describe it (e.g. in English, there are two words to name “cielo”, sky and heaven)
* behavioral knowledge, which teach us about facts and information, and implies a really strong cognitive effort that some people never successfully get.
In such a connected world, information and knowledge are two assets we must count on because they are key to success: for individuals, for enterprises, for education, for cultures, for societies and for a global collaborative world.
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