Summary
This paper discusses the role of knowledge management for sustainable development in research and teaching organizations (RTOs) by stressing the need that they would develop a common model of making sense when trying to couple “scientific research and social goals” to solve the wicked problems of humanity related to poverty, land degradation and climate change. After recalling the central role of the “ugly duckling” theorem in knowledge management, the paper suggests the use of the ontology approach within the single disciplines in order to promote the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. After considering the spatial dimension of the RTOs and the failure of the current use of science and technology to solve these wicked problems, this paper supports the idea of “rethinking development” on the basis of a paradigm of cooperation between RTOs of a transdisciplinary nature. The paper concludes that, notwithstanding an already active global computer network (Internet), it is necessary to develop and improve the research for adapting the “Web Evolution” to human needs.
Keywords: knowledge management, sustainable development, interdisciplinary, research and teaching organizations
1. Introduction
When I was invited by Professor Ludoslaw Drelichowski to participate to the international conference “Knowledge Management in Research and Teaching Organizations in Turbulent Environments” held at the University of Technology and Life Sciences in Bydgoszcz (Poland) from December 15–19, 2011 and to write a paper for the proceedings, I felt honored and I accepted the invitation as an occasion to review and challenge some of my ideas about the concept of knowledge management for sustainable development at research and teaching organizations (RTOs). Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the conference; however, I soon began to write the paper with the hope of writing something useful, at least for me, without any claim that the paper would be accepted and published in the proceedings of the conference. I am not an expert in knowledge management (KM) and informatics but an ecologist with interests in the human ecosystem and, in particular, in using informatics tools and mathematical methods to understand the role of vegetation within such a system. In carrying out my research activities, I try to produce knowledge useful for human needs in line with the visions expressed under different perspectives in Mayor’s book “Scientific Research and Social Goals: Towards a New Development Model” (20).
In this paper, I briefly consider the role of science and technology in “rethinking development” supported by the optimistic hope that, as intelligent enterprises, RTOs will be able to exploit the new information technologies on which KM relies. This will be essential to interacting with policy and planning organizations to create transdisciplinary networks capable of expressing, when necessary, clusters of expertise at different hierarchical levels suitable to facing the wicked problems related with poverty and land degradation (including deforestation, pollution, and climate change) that are emerging continuously in different parts of the world.
2. The “ugly duckling theorem” and its consequences in knowledge management
The definition of knowledge is not simple and appears to be still debated in epistemology. There are many types of knowledge (8). However, I prefer to classify knowledge into three types:
F) the knowledge of “Facts” (including objects and processes also called substances and accidents by Barry Smith (23),
W) the knowledge of “What” to do in specific circumstances, and H) the knowledge of “How” to do what needs to be done.
I like this classification because it can be useful for talking about KM in terms of set theory, fuzzy set theory, information theory, similarity theory, and decision theory. The literature in these fields, if we exclude the similarity theory (11), is immense and the paternity of ideas, especially in decision theory, is hard to define. The set of facts and processes (F), the set of actions that we have to do for realizing something (W), and the set of ways in which such actions should be done (H), are all subsets of the same set that we can call the set or the domain of knowledge (K). The comparisons of elements within each set (F), (W), and (H) can be done just for the sake of knowledge or for problem solving. In both cases, I think relevant the theorem of the “ugly duckling” of Watanabe (26) as described in his 1969 book “Knowing and Guessing: A quantitative Study of Inference and Information”. The theorem, described on page 376 of the book, says that “an ugly duckling and a swan are just as similar to each other as are two swans”.
The first immediate consequence of the theorem in KM is the fact that until the “set of objects” labeled with the word “swan” is unknown, it is impossible to say that the ugly duckling is a swan. However, we find the most important consequence when we paraphrase the theorem in terms of problem solving, i.e. a problem can be solved only if at least one solution exists and we find it (finding a solution is analogous to finding the swans for the ugly duckling). Therefore, to solve Problem X means to find the suitable set of facts that characterize it (Fx), the suitable set of actions to be done (Wx), and a suitable set of methods or ways (Hx) by which to perform the necessary actions. The solution may be found among the many possible solutions that can be generated by combining thought and knowledge. The problem is to find a lattice Lx corresponding to the two sets (Wx) and (Hx) that is similar as much as possible to lattice Lox, that would lead to a solution that is the most similar to what we consider the optimal solution for the Problem X. The tale of Hans Christian Andersen provides another insight relevant for KM, namely the fact that in order to discover the swans, the ugly duckling had to go outside of his farmyard. This reminds us of Einstein’s aphorism, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. However, we have to admit that without knowledge imagination would not very useful in guessing. For example, knowledge of the ecosystem concept was useful to create the “digital ecosystem”, an information structure considered very useful to solve practical problems (e.g. organization of the
knowledge within and between Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) (9). It is obvious that knowledge is essential to stimulate the imagination in order to solve problems and, going back to the concept of a “digital ecosystem”, it is clear that it became a reality only after ICT’s people started to know the concept of an ecosystem.
I do not want to describe what a “digital ecosystem” is as it will take up too much space, and I am not competent enough to do it properly; the interested reader can visit the website http://www.digital-ecosystem.org to get the idea about the concept. I will just summarize the concept with the definition given by Wikipedia: “A digital ecosystem is a distributed adaptive open socio-technical system with properties of self-organization, scalability, and sustainability; a “digital ecosystem” is informed by knowledge of natural ecosystems and is still being defined”. It would be useful also to know that since 2007 there has been a yearly IEEE International conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technology (DEST), whose proceedings may be found on the Internet. I only want to conclude that the ugly duckling theorem suggests that KM strategies should be addressed by the RTOs to develop an accessible information system that would let the users, as agents in planning and management activities, to reach the most complete knowledge of a given domain in order to let them to “find the swans”.
3. Turbulence in a scientific mind: the need for ontologies
I was attracted by the title of the conference since, besides evoking our perception of the turbulence in the political, socio-economic, cultural, and scientific systems in which we are living today, it evokes a frequent state of “turbulence” in my mind. This occurs frequently when I have to decide what the content of my lectures will be; when I decide the priority among the topics to carry out within the fields of my research interests; when I have to decide on the methods of data acquisition and data analysis; when I have to write a paper explaining the results of my research, but it always occurs when I am searching Internet in order to keep myself updated on the emerging science of sustainability (15). Following the web links, I always find new news about international and national initiatives around Agenda 21 and Kyoto protocol; about the initiatives of the European Environmental Agency on NATURA 2000 and on pollution prevention; about new organizations dealing with sustainable economy (e.g. the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability) and on the Green Economy, that push the state of my mind here and there in the multidimensional space of my knowledge with turbulent trajectories that have the negative effects to create in myself an uncomfortable state of uncertainty. It is because I identify the turbulence as one of the main causes of uncertainty, and uncertainty itself as a cause of turbulence that I like to mention the Angell’s paper (3) “Living with Uncertainty and Loving it”.
I think that Angell’s paper represents a paradigm that we, as humans, should accept and try to internalize if we want avoid “neuroses” at any level of our organizations, from the individual to society as a whole. To cope with uncertainty is a subject that generates great interest in scientific literature from the eighties. This interest is justifiable from many theoretical points of views (4), but also from practical ones, especially in view of finding a way to limit the negative effects of the perception of insecurity in particular sectors of our life (e.g. job insecurity) (6). To cope with uncertainty is stimulating new ways of dealing with scientific matters that address the scientists, decision makers, and politicians towards new paradigms of knowledge management in facing
wicked problems. This has certainly inspired Funtowicz and Ravetz (12) to formulate the concept of the “Second Order Science” or “Post-Normal Science” that would characterize the science of decision making for sustainable planning as a transdisciplinary discipline (2). I agree with Ludwig (18), who, while quoting Einstein’s aphorism “problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them” suggests that, “Scientists must be prepared to admit their limitations and the role that values play in their recommendations. Scientists can be most effective if they make their results accessible to interested laypersons. Consensus-base methods are a possible means of achieving such communication. More attention to underlying values and conflicts in values might enhance the credibility of technical approaches. Perhaps it would help us to understand why expert advice is so often ignored”. However, to be in agreement with him does not solve the problem of how to acquire and integrate useful information from the different disciplines to face the wicked problems of humanity. It is clear that it is impossible to read all of what it is published and all of what is available on the Internet.
I think that the turbulence in each scientific mind, and therefore within each discipline, should be reduced if the RTOs would co-operate among themselves to develop formal ontologies (24) within the specific disciplines on which they are working. The utility of the ontology is out of any doubt (13) since the ontology defines a common vocabulary for researchers who need to share and reuse data, information, and knowledge within a knowledge-based domain and includes machine-interpretable definitions of the concepts within the domain and the relations among them. The production of ontologies within each discipline would be the basis for producing a semantic web based on distributed intelligence (10) (23).This means that the data mining, information, and knowledge retrieval would be facilitated by the existence of a network of Ontologies, namely a network of coded knowledge to be easily shared and reused. The advantage of the semantic web is the fact that data, information, and knowledge would be structured by the computer in an automated way addressed to solve specific problems, and this would facilitate the use of the acquired knowledge supported by a “virtual expert”, whose existence is conditioned by the human capacity to develop it and to support it within a process of successive approximations by the possibility of updating the ontologies.
4. Spatial dimension of research and teaching organizations and their role in rethinking development
As mere mortals we, Europeans in this century, begin our experience about knowledge acquisition within our family during the first six years of life. During this period, knowledge acquisition is strongly conditioned by the culture of our parents, by their availability to stay with us, by their personal vision about the education they want to offer their offspring, and by the culture and attitudes of the kindergarten teachers. After that, we continue to learn in public or private schools according to standard procedures and programmes approved by the government. We experience early on what learning means and the advantage of the knowledge. While growing up, we become aware of the immense amount of knowledge out there. We learn about the existence of different disciplines and sub-disciplines and about the existence of different levels of knowledge acquisition within the same discipline, and we become aware of our immense ignorance.
After primary school, we have to choose among different types of secondary schools; after the secondary school we can choose among different types of high schools. Finally, we become aware of the existence of universities as teaching and research organizations. We learn that each university is structured into Faculties, Institutes, and/or Departments according to the disciplines (scientific and/ or humanistic), in which research is done by its personnel. We learn that university teachers are selected according to their capacity to produce knowledge through their research and whose results are testified to by publications (papers and books); the courses offered to the students are mainly based on the research experience and interest of the teachers. We may feel that the knowledge they are trying to transfer to us is biased by their own knowledge; however, we start to appreciate this as well as to appreciate learning on the job when working on preparing a thesis to defend during a final exam. We learn the importance of dictionaries, of textbooks, of mono-disciplinary treatises, and the encyclopaedia. Finally, as the generations of students over these past 20 years, we began to appreciate the “power” of the Internet in knowledge acquisition (e.g. access to Wikipedia and other open sources of e-learning).
During our university studies and especially if we pursue a Master’s and/or a PhD curriculum, we learn that there are many other kinds of research organizations – public and private, and that there is a profound difference between public and private research. We then begin to perceive the spatial dimension of the research with the first our participation in national and/or international scientific meetings. We become aware that universities and other research organizations (e.g. in Italy the National Research Council, ENEA, Research Areas, etc.) are spread over national territories following a spatial pattern that reflects the economic importance of the surroundings. If we consider the ranking of the universities according to a set of parameters that evaluate research quality, teaching quality, graduate employability, and internationalization as provided on the website http://topuniversity.com, it is not difficult to realize that the first 300 top universities of the world are all located among the few countries of North America, Europe, and Asia with a higher national total and/or per capita GDP or with the highest average growth rate. For example, the Italian universities listed among the 300 top universities are those of the four administrative regions with the highest total and per capita GDP, namely Lombardy, Lazio, Veneto, and Emilia Romagna.
It is clear that between the quality of RTOs, of which the universities are one significant expression, and the performances of the production system of the countries measured in terms of GDP, there is a link characterized by positive feedback. However, we should not be happy about this because the countries with the highest GDP per capita have also the highest ecological footprint per capita (i.e. the amount of biologically-productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources of a productive system and to assimilate the associated waste) (22) (25). Simple calculations of the ecological footprint of the countries indicate that if all humans would like to live in the same manner as that of North Americans and Europeans by using the current technology of producing food, goods, and energy, there would have to be at least three planet Earths (to be optimistic!) to sustain all of us.
If we are reasoning in terms of equity of the use of resources, we have to admit that something is going wrong about the effects of that positive feedback and that the adoption at the global level of the so-called Western lifestyle would be unsustainable. In other words, we should reconsider the meaning of progress and development, and we have to review the role of the RTOs with respect to the meaning we give to such words. If we can summarize the main message of the 2010 State of
the World from the World Watch Institute (http://www.worldwatch.org) as a suggestion to overcome the logic of consumerism, the main message for 2011 can be summarized as a suggestion to overcome the logic of the market and especially of the food market. It is not difficult to understand that the logic of consumerism and that of the market is the same. Beyond any logic the problem is clear: the human population is increasing, the resources are limited, humanity is organized into sovereign states (countries), and the distribution of natural resources (including space), knowledge, scientific and technological tools, and financial resources are unevenly distributed among such States.
The uneven distribution of knowledge and of RTOs was a major concern of the Pakistani Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam. He was considering the matter in the book edited by Hassam and Lai (14) “Ideals and Realities” under different perspectives, but mainly under the moral one. He was the main founder of the International Centre of Theoretical Physics (ICTP) (http://www.ictp.it), the Third World Academy of Science (http://twas.ictp.it), as well as the International Centre for Science and High Technology (ICS-UNIDO) (www.ics.trieste.it) in Trieste (Italy) and the International Centre for Theoretical and Applied Ecology (CETA) (www.ceta.ts.it) in Gorizia (Italy) from 1964 to 1988, with the hope that these institutions would be useful for promoting the diffusion of scientific knowledge in the southern half of the world. In the book “Ideals and Realities”, he posed the question, “How we can be optimists with respect to the Less-Developed World?”, and he concluded his introduction to the book with the following statements: “…unless, of course, there rises earlier somewhere a new Messiah, the one who can preach that in this age when technological miracles are indeed possible, the raising of living standards everywhere to a decent human level is first and foremost a moral problem, and a collective world responsibility”. It is clear that the problem is not only to promote the RTOs in developing countries, but also to change the attitude of all the RTOs of the world towards the research they conduct. Mayor’s book (20) poses the fundamental questions of 30 years ago: “Why do we scientific research, and for whom are its results intended?”; “What do we mean by development and how its priorities are determined in each country?”; and “How we establish social priorities in accordance with the ethnic, geographical, economic, and political characteristics of each country?”. The book is a clear invitation to promote making sense (27) of the RTOs activities that would go beyond the mono-disciplinary perspective and the reductionism of the science of the Industrial Era.
To identify the existence of wicked problems and to map them is very simple; what is difficult is to identify and accept their real causes, and what it is even more difficult is to find solutions that would be understood and accepted by the current structure of power both in the Developed Countries and in Developing Countries. However, as pointed out by Mayor (21), the importance of timeliness in policy making is essential: “The diagnosis on which policy is based should be as complete as possible, but it must also be made in time….Irreversibility is a key criterion to be taken into account for timely action. Postponement could lead to a point of no return”.
5. Rethinking development: cooperation versus competition
If I go back to Mayor’s book (20) and I consider his following statement: “I believe science and scientists have an indispensable role to play; they can no longer afford the luxury of withdrawal into their ivory towers”, then I must agree with the first part of the statement, but I have some doubts about the fact that the scientists did and do withdraw into their ivory towers. My personal experience about the colleagues I met in almost every part of the world and my knowledge about the history of science leads me to the conclusion that ivory towers do not exist and have never existed for scientists. It would be enough to consider:
1) that scientists during the Renaissance were funded by patrons to solve specific problems such as making fortifications, studying the trajectories of cannon balls, producing remedies for specific illness, etc.,
2) the role that scientists had (and still have) in producing the modern weapons- chemical, biological and nuclear, and finally
3) that today in the OECD countries, more than 60% of the research is funded by industry and that more than 65% is carried out by scientists in the laboratories of the industries, or if elsewhere, under their strict control even when using governmental funds (see Wikipedia under “funding of science” and the follow the links from there),
One can conclude that the problem is not to kick the scientists out of their ivory tower, the problem is to understand if the human system in which, and for which, they are working is capable of converting the results of their scientific and technological discoveries into benefits that can be equally shared by all humanity. It is evident that our current human system is not able to do so. This is proved by the fact that the countries belonging to the G8 (the USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Russia, and Italy) have, according to the World Bank, about 40% of the total GDP notwithstanding representing only about the 10% of the world’s population.
As Pascal Acot writes in his book “Historie de l’ecologie” (1), “Science is neither pure nor applied. It is essentially marked by crossed ideologies and mentalities, and at the same time it is tributary to technology and a generator of technologies. It is governed by the RTOs and simultaneously takes part of their creation and their transformation, ultimately is also inspiring social demands”. Scientists are not all equal to each other and they are not free from the weakness of the other “mortals”, so the “power” has always been successful in pushing science to be productive in generating competitive products (material or immaterial) that would be useful to conquer the minds and therefore the markets and that would facilitate to create and consolidate the power itself (19).
The perennial conflict between science and power already evident from the times of Socrates and Plato (19) is far from over, and today it is more tangible than ever thanks to the evident failure of both the dominant economic systems, namely the one based on Marxism and the one based on capitalism, in solving the two main problems of humanity: poverty and the environmental degradation. The tension between power and science can be testified by the green movements and parties that base their ideologies on the ecological sciences. Through the ecological sciences, man has learned what the impact of his development on the biosphere is and has realized that such impacts depend on his style of life, namely on his relationships with goods and services and on his idea of wealth. Through the ecological sciences, man has realized that he is taking part in a global ecosystem called a biosphere or bio-geosphere and that his socio-economic system cannot be
separated from it. Luckily, the “power” affected science more on its technological aspect rather than on that of its dialectic method.
Actually, this influence was and is useful to science in order to use the most effective technological tools to study systems that intrigue scientists. Science today is not limited to investigation of natural systems from the small particles that constitute matter to the universe; it started to investigate the human system with the scientific method and advanced technologies, combining the biology of man, his psychology, and his social and economical systems with the environmental system, where he is living, and from where he is extracting resources.
Rethinking development, as was stressed by Bartoli (5), means to reconsider the current paradigm of the dominant economy, to create a new one with primary goals addressed to the needs of the people rather than to make a profit: “A new paradigm must be defined, new strategies must be proposed. Rules, institutions and procedures must be invented which will strengthen the governance and governability of the economy at the global, regional and local levels- a radical renewal of economic thinking on which all efforts to rationalize are based”. From the book it clearly emerges that for sustainable development, the basic needs of humanity have to be clearly defined not only in the physical domain (food, water, housing, energy) but also within the psychological and spiritual domain. It also clearly emerges that the market should be a service and not a blind engine, ignoring people and values, by leaving the role to regulate the development to chance.
Bartoli’s book stresses that human rights are the basis for sustainable development and that labor and labor costs have to be considered in the perspective of human rights. The book stresses the failure of strategies based primarily on economic financial considerations and stresses the need of a multi-dimensional strategy interlinking economic, social, and environmental factors. The book also considers the great importance of the sovereign States as the human organization that mediates public and private interests: “The State is a key variable of the propagation environment with its multi-directional activities; it influences the entire economy through legislation, administration, justice, and taxation and, in its role as referee, affects its direction, situation, and balance, improving or reducing the efficiency of the economic system as a whole”. However, the States are “heterogeneous throughout the world both from the legal point of view and in terms of the economic nature (market or non-market) of its components”. Notwithstanding the good intentions expressed by the representatives of the States at the level of the United Nations Organizations (e.g. the Millennium Development Goals) and all the Human Development Reports by UNDP (www.undp.org) from 1990 to 2011, we are giving assistance to many intolerable contradictions: i.e. in order to gain peace, we make the war (see the recent war against Libya, the war in Syria, and the never-ending war in Afghanistan); we destroy food while people are starving; almost all the States “signed” for Agenda 21, but they do not fund adequately concrete actions for its implementation at local levels; countries like the USA and the UK, that after the Second World War have been among the main supporters of the United Nations Organization (UNO) (www.un.org), are leaving or have already left some of the UNO’s agencies such as UNESCO (www.unesco.org) and UNIDO (www.unido.org); everyone is putting their trust in the emerging green economy, but the governments continue to produce policies of science that push scientific research in the direction of short-term maximal economic return; everyone is talking about the utility of research for human development, but the funds for research are continuously cut back;
everyone in the UNO is talking about sustainable development and the role of cooperation, but the governments are pushing towards improving competition in the market domain etc., etc.
The “philosophy of the winner” looks to dominate Western civilization; however, based on the contradictions we are living with, it is clear that we should embrace another philosophy if we are seriously interested in facing the wicked problems of humanity. But what? What do we have to know for this change? On what basis does knowledge have to be managed? In answering these questions, we fall inevitably into philosophical problems concerning ethics and morality. We have first of all to know the causes of the above contradictions. In line with the book by Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz (17) “Der Abbau des Menschlichen” (The Waning of Humaneness), we can find such causes in the ambiguity of human nature, that on one side is still animal and that on the other side, thanks to the capacity of the human brain to elaborate “complicated” thoughts, is considered spiritual. The instinct of man to improve the fitness of his human nature, namely the ability of both survival and reproduction, is the key concept that may explain why things are going as they are going. The concept of the fitness of human nature, well-discussed by Edward O. Wilson in his book “Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge” (28), can be used to explain why humanity is organized as it is now in the sovereign States (countries) after millennia of migrations (7) and wars. We can interpret the States as organizations that are trying to ensure the fitness of human groups basically identified by their nationalities. The States can be seen as different “cultural species” that as animal and plant species are always busy to defend and expand their territory to improve their fitness. However, we have to admit that today the meaning of the territory of each State is more complex than the mere land included within its boundaries. The territory is now the set of human brains convinced to buy and use the products of the production system of the State, irrespective of where these “brains” are located. In other words, the territory of a State is its market domain. Through the market, each State ensures the fitness of the corresponding cultural human group.
Things are further complicated by the existence of the multi-national corporations (MCs). These may be also interpreted as cultural groups of humans in which nationality does not matter, that look for their fitness competing for “territory”, namely the market, among them and with the industries owned by private national companies or directly by the States. MCs are ambiguous organizations since contemporaneously they may be owned by private companies of several States or by the States themselves. They may bring some advantages to the hosting State, but also a lot of uncertainty related to job security and financial assets (e.g. volatility of foreign investments). These corporations have advantages with respect to national companies because they are not affected that much by the social duties of the States, namely expenses for education, health, defense, transportation, etc.; in practice, they are far from being affected directly as the national industries by the public debts of the States and by their taxation policy. In the context of the complex issues related to the fitness of the human nature, there are many things that we as ordinary people have to know in order to participate in the “governance” of our planet in a democratic and peaceful way. It is out of any claim the possibility to know everything that should be useful; however, there are some fundamental facts that we should know in order to influence the general policy of the States and in particular their policy with respect to the RTOs.
Everyone should agree that the production system should be tailored to satisfy the needs of humans and not for creating centers of power and all should agree that the market should be a service to facilitate access to the goods produced and not a means to enrich. However, it looks
that many men need the power and a lot of money and that they are working hard for them. We have to admit that the perception of needs is different according to the different cultures of the social groups, and that the perception of the power exerted by the production system, including the market, is also different. The fact that the production systems of the States and of multi-national corporations are influencing the policy at all levels of the governance of the States is without any doubt a reality and that everyone can experience through job blackmail. This again is a natural consequence of the fact that each production system as a living organism is looking for its fitness. There are fundamental issues that the RTOs interested in sustainable development should consider as “indispensable” research topics on which to apply the KM techniques. Among these I would like to mention just the following:
1) the meaning of money, the way it is produced, and alternative ways for its production. In this respect, I like to remember the famous aphorism of Henry Ford, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning”;
2) the economic theories and ideologies at the light of the impact they may have on the human ecosystem (including man’s expectations of wealth) and what are the relationships between the private and public sectors based upon;
3) in what way is the market working and in what way can it be organized in order to facilitate financial transactions and goods exchange;
4) how the prices can be regulated and how the salaries and incomes are established;
5) what the relationships between the banks, the stock markets, the States, and the multi-nationals (MCs) are;
6) the impact of the so-called new economy that according to Kelly (16) “represents a tectonic upheaval in our commonwealth, a far more turbulent reordering than mere digital hardware has produced”;
7) the quantification of the needs of human populations regarding food, water, and energy consumptions and health problems and the ways to achieve the optimal distribution of the goods among the people of the entire world;
8) the consistency of natural resources and the capacity of the biosphere to regulate the water, nutrients, and oxygen cycles and to sustain the necessary levels of biodiversity; in other words, the carrying capacity of our planet;
9) the impacts the production systems have on human ecosystems during all lifecycles of their structures and their products;
10) how to reduce the energy and material consumption in the production systems by finding new ways of energy production and new products;
11) the acceptance of a population of alternative products and energy production and alternative ways of using private goods and public goods;
12) what the role of the technologies of information and communication (ICT) is in connecting the people and in what way they can be used to create a platform for a global debate on our common future.
The role of the RTOs would be essential to create useful knowledge on such matters. However, in order to do this it is necessary to review the research policy in view of effectively improving the capacity of RTOs in producing and improving knowledge to facilitate the participation of the “ordinary people” in the development of “Post-Normal Science” (12).
The commitment of all the RTOs to work directly for the benefit of all humanity is a hard task that requires going beyond the primordial impulse of humans to fight against other humans to acquire the territory that would ensure their fitness. His Holiness Pope John Paul II, in his inaugural speech on October 22, 1978, indicated that it is fear limiting us in this respect and invites:” ….open the boundaries of the States, of the economic systems and political systems, as well as the systems of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid!”. We can interpret the fear mentioned by the Pope as the fear to lose our fitness from the individual to the States.
For promoting the cooperation among the States we do not have to reinvent the wheel or rediscover hot water; we already have international institutions as the UNO’s agencies and programmes (ILO, UNESCO, FAO, UNIDO, WHO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNEP, etc.) and other organizations such the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank (WB), where one can find the forum for the coordination of the activities of RTOs concerning all of the 12 issues mentioned above. The cooperation between RTOs can be promoted within the national and international scientific associations. These associations could be also useful to promote cooperation between the RTOs and other national and international organizations regarding policy nature (e.g. UNO’s agencies and programmes).
The paradigm of competition for conquering the market that is analogous to the paradigm of competition within the species and between the species to conquer the territory to ensure their fitness, has to be fully understood and the competition between the human minds has to shift from the market domain to the “problem solving” domain.
6. Conclusion
Today, the World Wide Web on the Internet and information and communication technology (ICT) makes evident that we all, and the organizations we belong, formally or informally, are information processing systems with a perception of the global connectedness that becomes stronger and stronger as information and communication technology is progressively “impregnating” the market. The knowledge management within and between the RTOs are today based on ICT and especially on web technology. The communication between scientists and ordinary people is today greatly simplified and may be direct, thanks to the possibilities offered by the web such as e-mail, web pages, blogs, etc. The feedback of using the Internet on the relationship between science and power is unpredictable, and the effects of the emerging new economy based on intangibles (information, relationships, entertainment, services, security, etc.) that may be provided through the web could have a revolutionary effect on the ongoing asset market. What the RTOs need is to create a web of knowledge that would explicitly face the detrimental problems of humanity within a cooperative perspective rather than based on the ongoing competitive attitude.
To conclude this paper, I like to use the concept of a digital ecosystem as a metaphor that testifies as the integration between philosophy, socio-economics, and natural sciences is a reality going on progressively with tangible effects in applied sciences such those of the world of Information Communication Technologies (ICT). The integration between human and environmental disciplines is a complex matter that is out of a real control and planning of the scientific community. We have to admit that scientific integration is a result of a “self organization” of the scientific system, which is evolving following the evolution of human needs
and market pressure. The adaptation of the web of the RTOs to the human needs would be greatly beneficial to spread new ideas and knowledge in due time before we humans will ruin ina third world war.
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INTERDYSCYPLINARNE I TRANSDYSCYPLINARNE ASPEKTY ZARZĄDZANIA WIEDZĄ DLA ZRÓWNOWAĩONEGO ROZWOJU W DZIEDZINIE ORGANIZACJI
BADAē I I NAUCZANIA Streszczenie
W artykule omówiono rolĊ zarządzania wiedzą dla zrównowaĪonego rozwoju dziedzinie organizacji badaĔ i nauczania (RTO), podkreĞlając potrzebĊ rozwoju wspólnego modelu nadającemu sens integracji "badaĔ naukowych i celów społecznych" w celu rozwiązania trudnych problemów ludzkoĞci związanych z ubóstwem, degradacją gleb i zmianami klimatycznymi. Po przypomnieniu centralnej roli "brzydkiego kaczątka" w teorii zarządzania wiedzą, w artykule sugeruje siĊ zastosowanie podejĞcia ontologicznego w obszarze pojedynczych dyscyplin w celu promowania podejĞcia inter- i transdyscyplinarnego. Po rozwaĪeniu przestrzennego wymiaru RTO oraz niewłaĞciwego aktualnego wykorzystania zdobyczy nauki i technologii, aby rozwiązaü ww. problemy, artykuł popiera ideĊ "doskonalenia przemyĞlenia" na podstawie paradygmatu współpracy miĊdzy podejĞciem RTO a podejĞciem o charakterze transdyscyplinarnym. W artykule stwierdza siĊ, Īe niezaleĪnie od juĪ działającej globalnej sieci komputerowej (Internet), konieczne jest opracowywanie i doskonalenie badaĔ dotyczących dostosowania "Ewolucji Web" do potrzeb człowieka.
Słowa kluczowe: zarzdzanie wiedz, zrównowa=ony rozwój, interdyscyplinarny, organizacja bada% i nauczania
Enrico Feoli
Department of Life Sciences University of Trieste 34100 Trieste, Italy e-mail: feoli@units.it
