How can organizations adopt ecologies when their goal is to drive out chaos and messiness (not embrace it)?
Beyond a change of organizational mindset (which would not hurt), networks provide the new structural model. The cause-effect, top-down, mandated flow of hierarchies is replaced with the emergent, loosely connected, adaptive model of networks. Hierarchy adapts knowledge to the organization; a network adapts the organization to the knowledge.
Figure 36. Knowledge Structures
Table 2. Hierarchies and Networks
| Hierarchy |
Network |
| Static |
Dynamic |
| Structured (in advance) |
Flowing structure |
| Stable |
Equality (in theory) |
| Managed |
Connected-entities |
| Boundaries |
Participant and process defined structure |
| Centralized |
Decentralized |
| Certainty |
Adaptive |
| Managed and created |
Nurtured and fostered |
| Pre-filtered |
Emergent |
| The networked world continuously refines, reinvents, and reinterprets knowledge, often in an autonomic manner. |
|
| |
Morris, Mason, Robson, Lefrier, & Collier |
Networks occur within ecologies.
Nodes and connectors comprise the structure of a network. In contrast, an ecology is a living organism. It influences the formation of the network itself. For example, each learner in an organization possesses a personal learning network. The health of this network is influenced by the suitability of the ecology in which the learner exists. If the ecology is healthy, it will permit networks to flourish and grow. If the ecology is not healthy, networks will not develop optimally. A healthy knowledge ecology allows individuals to quickly and effectively enhance their existing learning…enabling better decisions…better performance.
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