PhD – Page 5 – Ariel Sheen

Notes on European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 1: Knowledge Management Framework

European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 1: Knowledge Management Framework

Successful KM implementations in business settings prioritize attention on soft issues – including human and cultural aspects, personal motivations, change management methodologies, new and improved business processes enabling multidisciplinary knowledge sharing, communication and collaboration – and see technology as an enabler.

Despite this, most efforts so far at addressing the challenge of KM in business environments have typically taken a “technology-push” approach, concentrating major effort on putting in place IT tools that will “solve the knowledge creation, sharing and reuse problem”.

The overall intention has been to provide meaningful and useful guidelines to companies, and notably SMEs (see below), as to how they might align their organizations culturally and socially to take advantage of the opportunities of knowledge sharing within and beyond their organizational boundaries.

If the Framework helps an organization achieve a common understanding of KM, align and focus its actions, identify what KM aspects are relevant to that organization, understand what is the right combination of these aspects, which processes should be tackled and how to develop KM both an organizational and individual level – then it has value.

Why KM in SMEs?

Owners and managers of SMEs differ in what they term success. Survival and continuity, profit, return on capital employed, numbers of employees and customers, pride in product, skills and service, employment for family members, and enjoyable work life, are frequently mentioned criteria.

This European KM Framework is designed to promote a common European understanding of KM, show the value of the emerging KM approach and help organizations towards its successful implementation.

The Framework should be considered as a starting point for developing, if appropriate, an organization-specific framework that serves best the needs of a particular organization’s KM approach.

The KM Framework considers three layers as most important for KM:

a) The business focus should be in the centre of any KM initiative and represents the value-adding processes of an organization, which may typically include strategy development, product/service innovation and development, manufacturing and service delivery, sales and customer support.

b) Five core knowledge activities have been identified as most widely used by organizations in Europe: identify, create, store, share and use.

c) The enablers represent the third layer and comprise two main categories, called personal and organizational knowledge capabilities, which complement each other. These capabilities should be seen as the enablers for the knowledge activities outlined above.

Core value-adding processes

In addition to supporting the improvement of the core processes of an organization, KM methods can also be applied within its supporting processes: competence management is one such example from the HR arena; developing best practice databases to capture and exchange knowledge about optimum procedures throughout the organization is another example from the area of continuous improvement processes; methods for intellectual property management (e.g. patents, copyrights) is a further example from the area of management of financial and non-financial assets.

Small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs) in particular are increasingly building networks to supply their products, to share their resources and to learn from each other. Long-term partnerships are established in order to develop new products and services that a single organization could not cope with alone. Therefore partners and suppliers, as well as clients, should often be involved within the scope

Empirical research, practical experiences and the analysis of more than 150 KM frameworks worldwide have shown that the following areas are, in most cases, the most important to address:

1. describe how knowledge is used
2. raise awareness about the required KM activities
3. reduce complexity
4. design a KM solution.

The five core knowledge activities are:

Identify knowledge
Create New Knowledge
Store Knowledge
Share Knowledge
Use Knowledge

Two important requirements have to be fulfilled to achieve improvements from these core knowledge activities:

First, the core activities have to be aligned or integrated into the organizational processes and daily tasks.
Second, the core activities have to be carefully balanced in accordance with the specificities of each business process and organization. A KM solution should not focus only on one or two activities in isolation.

4.1 Personal knowledge capabilities

the following personal knowledge capabilities are usually required for a successful implementation of a KM solution:

a) Ambition;
b) Skills;
c) Behaviour;
d) Methods, T ools and T echniques;
e) Time management;
f) Personal knowledge.

Just asking simple questions like…

Is there somebody else who might have knowledge that could help me further here?
What did we learn in this project?
With whom should we share what we learn?
…could have a significant impact on the way knowledge is developed, shared and used in an organization.

An often-used saying related to KM is “an hour of work in the library could save you a month of work …”.

Research indicates that the pressures of knowledge-based work are increasing in modern societies. These can include the need to solve unforeseen problems, taking greater levels of personal self-responsibility and decision-making, carrying out more coordination tasks in cooperative work settings, a greater number of information processing tasks and a higher dependency on the speed of input from colleagues and clients.

Organizational knowledge capabilities

Organizational knowledge capabilities describe the conditions that the leadership of an organization has to establish in order to facilitate effective knowledge use within its value-adding processes, by its managers, employees and other stakeholders.

The following organizational knowledge capabilities are typically relevant for a successful implementation of a KM solution:

g) Mission, Vision & Strategy;
h) Culture;
i) Process & Organization;
j) Measurement;
k) Technology & Infrastructure;
l) Knowledge Assets.

Culture

Since most knowledge processes are on a more or less voluntary basis and knowledge is to a large degree personal, there needs to be within an organization a culture of motivation, a sense of belonging, empowerment, trust and respect before people really start to engage themselves in developing, sharing and using knowledge. It requires a culture in which people are respected, based on the knowledge they have and the way they are putting it to use for the organization.

4.2.6 Knowledge Assets

The biggest challenge for any organization is to develop and make optimal use of the employees’ knowledge (their so-called “human capital”) and that of their external stakeholders (their so-called “customer capital”) by transforming this know-how into shared knowledge assets (so-called “structural capital”). Knowledge assets are those , which remain with the company when the employees walk out through the door –such as manuals, customer databases, process descriptions, patents etc. Typically, human capital is more related to the internal or tacit component of knowledge (experience, skills, attitude) and structural capital more related to explicit information.

Notes from European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 5: Knowledge Management Terminology

European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 5: KM Terminology

Best/Good Practices: KM practices that have produced outstanding results in other situations, inside or outside of a particular organization and which can be validated, codified and shared with others and recommended as models to follow.

Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO): The individual with overall leadership of KM in an organization. Typically, the CKO will articulate and champion the KM vision, provide leadership for implementing and sustaining KM initiatives, and has the ultimate responsibility for knowledge creation, sharing and application.

Community of Practice (CoP): Informal, self-organized, collaboration of people, within or between organizations, who share common practices, interests or aims. When the CoP proves useful to its members over time, they may formalize its status by adopting a group name and a regular system of interchange through enabling tools. (Other types of KM communities include Communities of Interest and Communities of Purpose).

Core Competences: The set of skills, experience and attributes recognized by an organization as critical to their success in KM. – for example: information literacy, a sharing culture etc.

Customer Capital: Refers to the value of an organization’s network of satisfied clients, and their loyalty to the organization.

Data: Discrete, objective facts (numbers, symbols, figures) without context and interpretation.

Explicit Knowledge: Individual and collective knowledge that has been codified, typically in objects, words, and numbers, in the form of graphics, drawings, specifications, manuals, procedures etc. and can therefore be easily shared and understood.

Human Capital: Describes the value of the know-how and competencies of an organization’s employees. An organization which systematically develops its Human Capital is more likely to become a successful learning organization (see definition 23).

nformation: Is based on data, and adds value to the understanding of a subject and in context, is the basis for knowledge.

Information Management: Covers the processes of selecting, capturing, categorizing, indexing and storing information. Typically this involves active and continuous review of content stored in, or distributed through a range of tools (databases, taxonomies (see definition 30), human networks etc).

Intangible Assets: Assets that can have a great value to an organization, but which typically have no physical presence and have traditionally not been recognized from a financial perspective, except when sometimes grouped together as “goodwill” on balance sheets. Comprises assets such as reputation, brand value, monopoly rights and other non-balance sheet items such as “potential” –i.e. the capacity to generate competitive advantage in the future.

Intellectual Capital: Intellectual Capital (IC), a subset of the intangible assets (see definition 11) is commonly accepted to include three sub-categories: Human Capital, Structural Capital, Customer Capital (see definitions [8, 28 and 5 respectively). IC can include the knowledge of employees, data and information about processes, experts, products, customers and competitors; and intellectual property such as patents or regulatory licenses.

Knowledge: A set of data and information (when seen from an Information Technology point of view), and a combination of, for example know-how, experience, emotion, believes, values, ideas, intuition, curiosity, motivation, learning styles, attitude, ability to trust, ability to deal with complexity, ability to synthesize, openness, networking skills, communication skills, attitude to risk and entrepreneurial spirit to result in a valuable asset which can be used to improve the capacity to act and support decision making. Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit (see definitions 7 and 29 respectively), individual and/or collective.

Knowledge Audit: A systematic review, typically based on questionnaires, interviews or narrative techniques, of the knowledge within an organization. Often also includes a mapping of knowledge interactions and flows within and between organizations, teams and individuals.

Knowledge-Based Economy: A recently coined term that refers to the stage of economic evolution in which knowledge is considered as the key factor of production and competitiveness. This major change has significant implications for the strategy, operations, and structure of all types of organization, large or small, public or private, commercial, not-for-profit or academic.

Knowledge Management (KM): Planned and ongoing management of activities and processes for leveraging knowledge to enhance competitiveness through better use and creation of individual and collective knowledge resources.

KM Framework: Describes the most essential factors (assets, people, processes, tools) influencing the success or failure of a KM initiative, and their interdependent relationships. Typically, a framework is built up into a pictorial representation which serves as an aide-memoire for implementing KM within an organization, helping users to position individual KM initiatives with within a wider context (see also booklet 1 of this CEN guide).

Knowledge Life Cycle: Describes the principle phases of managing knowledge, such as selecting, maintaining, measuring, sharing and applying knowledge in given contexts.

KM Measurement: One of the KM life cycle phases (see definition 18) Aims to help organizations measure the value created by their KM projects, programmes and strategies. For example, measuring return on investment in KM is often possible through a range of both quantitative and qualitative techniques (see also booklet 4 of this CEN guide).

KM Roles: To implement KM successfully sometimes requires specific and clearly- defined roles. These are not always formal, but can include such roles as CKO (see definition 2), content managers, change management experts, knowledge brokers and harvesters etc.

KM Strategy: A declaration of how the organization will use KM methods, tools, processes, and practices to achieve business objectives by leveraging its content, people and processes and how KM will support the organization’s overall strategy.

KM Tools: The generic sets of tools that enable implementation of KM processes. These can be either IT systems (e.g. databases, intranets, extranets, portals), or methodologies, or human networks (e.g. CoPs – see definition 3).

Learning Organization: An organization that views its future competitive advantage as based on continuous learning and use of knowledge and an ability to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances.

Narrative Techniques: Techniques employed in the context of KM to describe complicated issues, explain events, communicate lessons learned, or bring about cultural change (see also booklet 2 of this CEN guide). Such techniques include oral story-telling, drama and some styles of written knowledge capture., which can richness to communication and carry more complex messages and sub-text than non-narrative techniques.

Organizational Culture: The way of perceiving, thinking and feeling, shared and transmitted among organizational members. Often referred to as: “the way things are done around here” (see also booklet 2 of this CEN guide).

Organizational KM: Unlike personal KM (see definition 27), which centres on the individual, organizational KM depends upon an enterprise-wide strategic decision to actively manage knowledge through a range of processes, tools and people.

Personal KM: A set of concepts, disciplines and tools for organizing often previously unstructured knowledge, to help individuals take responsibility for what they know and who they know.

Structural Capital: Describes the knowledge that has been captured and institutionalised within the structure, processes and culture of an organization. SC is a subset of explicit knowledge (see definition 7). It could include patents, copyrights, proprietary software, trademarks, trade secrets etc. It can be stored in the form of documented procedures, databases, expert systems, decision-support software and KM systems. SC is everything left at the office when the employees go home, and can clearly be regarded as an organization’s property.

Tacit Knowledge: Tacit knowledge (sometimes also called implicit knowledge) consists of mental models, behaviours and perspectives, largely based on experience. This knowledge is difficult to codify, but KM techniques such as learning by doing or collaboration between communities (see definition 3) can help people to share this knowledge.

Taxonomy: An outcome from knowledge mapping and structuring processes. A taxonomy is a hierarchical classification which helps users understand how explicit knowledge can be grouped and categorized. A good taxonomy helps users of knowledge by improving their search and retrieval experiences.

Notes from European Guide to Good Practices in Knowledge Management – Part 2: Organizational Culture

You can read the entire European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 2 Organizational Culture here.

Below are some of the passages I found most valuable.

Culture is perhaps the most important factor in successfully managing knowledge. It is a key influence on behaviours. This booklet looks at what culture is, how it develops and how you can work with it to ensure your KM programme is successful. It attempts to give some answers to:

1) How to get the support and active involvement of the members of the organization (issues related to human resources: motivation, competencies, etc).

2) How to organize for the implementation of KM (issues related to the formal and informal structure of the organization).

3) How to get the appropriate climate for KM implementation (issues related to specific activities and tools to be used).

Organizations, even small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), rarely involve a single culture; there will be subcultures (groups which exhibit cultural characteristics, i.e. values, norms and practices that differ from the main organizational culture and from other subcultures). One common manifestation is “departmental differences”, which can lead to the phenomenon of departmentalization or so-called “silo thinking”.

There are personal, team and organizational ‘agendas’ containing conflicting aspirations. This gives rise to the complexity of human relationships in organizations and organizations’ behaviour as so-called “complex adaptive systems”.

Individuals employment puts them in a contractual relationship in which there are expectations and responsibilities. Individuals’ “psychological contract” (i.e. their beliefs about what they owe the organization and what the organization owes them) drives them to seek, to find and to modify the culture to better serve their psychological contract. This does not necessarily imply a selfish or self-seeking motive. Public service, duty, or care for others may well be a strong value within the individual, group, or organization. The more supportive the culture the more productivity, trusting and sharing will be exhibited by individuals.

People’s identity is fundamental to their motivation and commitment. It drives what they feel is important knowledge, what, how and with whom they will share that knowledge and how they value their contribution to colleagues and the organization. It is important when mapping knowledge to identify those people whose self- worth is related to being perceived as key personnel in knowledge flows.

Managing the boundaries between individual and corporate knowledge requires negotiation and high emotional intelligence, particularly if tacit knowledge is to be exchanged, and for KM tools such as expertise directories or “lessons learned” to be comprehensive.

Some obstructive properties of groupthink include the following:

• Illusion of invulnerability: members believe that past successes guarantee future successes and so take extreme risks.
• Collective rationalization: members collectively rationalize away information that contradicts their assumptions.
• Illusion of morality: members believe that they are all moral and so could not make a bad decision.
• Shared stereotypes: members dismiss evidence that is contradictory by discrediting the source of that information.
• Direct pressure: sanctions are placed on members who dissent from the majority opinion by, for example, using assertive language to enforce compliance.
• Self-censorship: members keep quiet about any misgivings they have so that they do not voice concerns.
• “Mind guards”: members screen out information from outsiders where this might challenge the group’s assumptions and beliefs.
• Illusion of unanimity: given these other symptoms, it appears that there is consensus within the group, even though there may be many of those involved who do not agree with the group decision.

There are three common types of community, which can be found both within an organization and across organizations:

• Communities of interest are groups with a mutual interest in a particular topic whose members wish to learn more and further develop their interest in the subject.
• Communities of Practice (CoPs) bring together people to share insights, develop expertise and to foster good practice through the exchange and creation of knowledge in a specific area. They are often a focus for building specific capability in their organization and ensuring that this is protected and retained in the organization as people move on. Formal functions (e.g. Finance, Marketing, Human Resources) often offer excellent potential for inter-organizational CoPs.
• Communities of purpose have a shorter time horizon and are accountable for delivering a specific business goal. These could include project teams, steering groups and task forces.

When individuals are asked to introduce their knowledge into an organizational system, e.g. a client database, they often tend to think that they have lost the ownership of know-how that until then remained exclusive to them. The objectives set for KM in the organization therefore need to take into account the rules and habits concerning the ownership and control of specific knowledge, in order to encourage the transition from personal to organizational knowledge.

A positive experience normally means that there has been a positive and important gain for the individual; it might be increased credibility, recognition, monetary or promotional reward etc.

There are two main categories of trust, personal trust and competence (or identity) based trust. For effective KM it does not need to be at the level of personal trust, but can be competence-based. So it can take a number of forms:

• Identity based – I trust you because of your role or position – e.g. a doctor.

• Reciprocity based – I engage in trust behaviour because I believe you will too.
• Elicitative Trust – By engaging in acts of trust I will elicit trust from the other person.
• Compensatory trust – Some, but not all, will fail to engage in the needed behaviour and therefore I must take a lead.
• Moralistic Trust – I will act in a trustworthy way irrespective of what others do.

Leaders should provide purpose, direction and behavioral role models. They share ideas with, walk among and listen to members of the enterprise, customizing the message and sensing employees’ understanding of the enterprise’s direction. These qualities are important at all levels in the organization, but have more impact the higher the position held. Management involves interpreting the enterprise vision and mission in a way that makes sense and resonates with employees. Managers guide performance and offer suggestions for corrective action. KM frequently involves guiding people’s actions rather than directing; managers therefore need the skills and competences to create a climate that fosters the creation, sharing, and application of knowledge; i.e. a broader basis of leadership skills.

Credibility is strongly related to trust and qualities of leadership, both already recognized as fundamental to a knowledge–enabled organization.

• High credibility and reliability means that when you give advice or make a judgment on your area of credible expertise it is based on sound knowledge or wisdom;
• People in the organization know that when you say something will happen, it will;
• People in the organization know that when you say something will not happen, it will not;
• People accept that you have the necessary judgment, skill and insight to be able to choose correctly between what should and should not happen;
• People accept that you have the necessary backing, levers of influence, resources and if necessary weapons at your disposal to ensure certainty of chosen outcome, once determined;
• When you obtain agreement or commitment from them to deliver something, they know they have to deliver it.

For a KM intervention to succeed, those involved must feel it is important enough that they must participate, that mistakes made in learning will be accepted and that time for change will be allowed.

In a consulting company, where the members of the organization viewed knowledge as their personal possession, and therefore refused to share, the management team encouraged knowledge sharing by changing the new project allocation process. Rather than giving projects to individual consultants, they were given to a group of consultants with the necessary expertise, forcing the consultants to network and market their expertise internally to participate on projects. Only by getting invited to join new projects could they be rewarded, thus giving them a built-in incentive to advertise their expertise internally. As a result the competition for status drove knowledge sharing rather than hoarding.

The iterative process for knowledge creation involves:

Empathizing – sharing and developing ideas together through social exchange

Articulating – into explicit form

Connecting – using different explicit forms to help the idea move forward

Embodying- incorporating into a product/process/service that has value.

Part of your KM program should therefore involve mapping existing competencies, e.g. by means of “knowledge skill tests” and deciding what to do about those that are missing, by offering training or including learning by doing programs in the organization.

For sharing knowledge to become a cultural norm, the benefits of sharing must exceed the benefits of retention in the eyes of the individuals concerned. This may mean that they are better known and get invited to do more interesting work, or are more visible (e.g. leading to promotion), or enjoy being helpful to others, or receive rewards etc. Individual preferences will suggest what sort of benefits will be important for any one individual.

One electronics company developed a so-called “virtual Hollywood“ and asked “directors” (employees) to present “scripts” (improvement ideas) to “investors” (general managers) who would choose the ones to “produce” (implement). The project promoted out-of-the-box thinking and in the first year generated over 200 submissions, addressing process improvement and product development.

A learning organization is an organization creating, acquiring and transferring competence and being able to change its behavior according to new knowledge and views. (Garvin, 1993)

What does a learning organization learn?

• To use learning to reach its goals.
• To help people value the effects of their learning upon their organization.
• To avoid making the same mistakes again.
• To share information in ways that prompt appropriate action.
• To link individual performance with organizational performance.
• To tie rewards to key measures of performance.
• To take in a lot of environmental information at all times.
• To create structures and procedures that support the learning process.
• To foster ongoing and orderly dialogues.
• To make it safe for people to share openly and take risks.

What does a learning organization look like?
• Learns collaboratively, open and across boundaries.
• Values how it learns as well as what it learns.
• Invests in staying ahead of the learning curve in its industry.
• Gains a competitive edge by learning faster and smarter than competitors.
• Turns data into useful knowledge quickly and at the right time and place.
• Enables every employee to feel that every experience provides him/her a chance to learn something potentially useful, even if only for leveraging future learning.
• Exhibits little fear and defensiveness.
• Takes risks but avoids jeopardizing the basic security of the organization.
• Invests in experimental and seemingly tangential learning (related but not conforming to existing learning patterns) and in serendipity.
• Supports people and teams who want to pursue action-learning projects.
• Depoliticizes learning by not penalizing individuals and groups for sharing information and conclusions.

How does a learning organization evolve? By…

• Questioning current assumptions about learning.
• Getting an outside perspective.
• Tying the goal of becoming a learning company to organizational vision.
• Funding or creating a champion in top management.
• Looking for the `pain’ in the organization – the place(s) where more effective learning could help.
• Articulating learning organization ideas plainly.
• Rewarding group as well as individual learning success and failure.
• Finding an external competitor or other focus point to spur greater co-operative learning.
• Finding ways to collaborate internally, unhampered by boundaries.

In order to drive the community forward one should consider:

• Identifying or electing a coordinator.
• Establishing the community infrastructure – tools available to support interaction between community members – such as e-mail, discussion groups, an intranet, other tools to build/share knowledge resources.
• A launch aimed at attracting potential members, securing commitment, agreeing initial priorities and actions and consolidating the active members.
• Move into ongoing community operation, ensuring that the steering group, the sponsor and the community coordinator work with members to deliver the community’s goals.
• Evaluate outcomes, celebrate and communicate success within and outside the community, in order to keep interest and energy levels high.

The process of creating a community cannot be rushed because some self-adjusting mechanisms first need to be put in place, in order to make the community robust. The general stages that communities go through are:

• Excitement when forming – something new
• Confusion – about the purpose
• Clarification – who is to do what
• Growing – trust and respect building up
• Arrival – the community is self-directing.

Mentoring involves matching new or inexperienced employees with more experienced senior personnel, so that the intangible, tacit knowledge of an industry or organization can be passed on effectively. It allows the newer employees to grow without necessarily just learning the hard way and should create a bond between mentor and protégé. This technique can be particularly useful for organizations with a substantial proportion of employees approaching retirement age, or where there are steep learning curves, or high turnover rates.

When researching, designing, implementing or evaluating any KM program, consider using story, since it can:

• Enable organizations to value, capture and translate individual experiences into a shared resource (lessons learned).

• Develop a culture that values rich, effective and meaningful dialogue both in conversation and in records.
• Develop tools and techniques to capitalize on project team experiences.
• Explore roles and relationships.
• Tangible objects provide meaningful ‘hooks’, thereby stimulating the creation of new meanings, communities and memories.
• Provide the ‘cultural glue’ for communities and networks.
• Help explore the risks and opportunities presented by any KM experience.

Dialogue, rather than discussion, usually provides the best environment for surfacing true experiences safely and dealing with them. Therefore an environment that encourages dialogue must establish ground rules for behavior. It requires those involved to be willing to work towards co-creating an outcome and a willingness to listen without provoking justification or defensiveness.

Each community is a subculture within an organization which has developed its own cultural norms. These norms encourage or limit the acceptance of processes, technology or trust-based relationships. The experience of using technology can affect the norms of the community. The implementation of technology provides experiences for the individuals within the community and their experiences thereby modify the cultural norms. If the experience is beneficial the move towards a knowledge sharing culture is enhanced. If the experience is frustrating, more difficult than existing methods, or in other ways unrewarding, it will be seen as detrimental.

Notes On Designing an Integrated Methodology for Knowledge Management Strategic Planning: The Roadmap Toward Strategic Alignment

The main aim of the study is to develop a new methodology for KM strategic planning to navigate KM projects strategically. The mixed-method approach was used to develop KM strategic planning methodology.

The main focus of the proposed methodology is KM strategic alignment by considering internal and external environment of business and adopting a top-down approach in strategic planning which was less seen in the previous studies.

The proposed methodology helps organizations to know what processes and activities must be emphasized in KM project adoption. Application of the proposed integrated methodology assists organizations to gain strategic alignment and fit KM investment with a business requirement.

the proposed methodology is general in nature; it is recommended to develop customized KM strategic methodologies in specific domains, for example, public organization, SCM and virtual organization.

The majority of investments in the field of KM do not meet organizations’ knowledge needs and expected benefits, and therefore, it leads to loss of investments (Ale et al., 2014). Some of the important reasons for the failure of KM projects are the lack of an appropriate roadmap or methodology to implement KM initiatives (Kim et al., 2003; Wiig, 1998; Bolisani and Scarso, 2015), the lack of clear distinction between data, information and knowledge, ignorance of unique features of knowledge and knowledge workers (Kim et al., 2003), lack of clear KM strategies and vision (Beiryaei and Jamporazmay, 2010; Martinsons et al., 2017), lack of KM strategic alignment (Martinsons et al., 2017) and ignorance of consequences of KM (Lopez-Nicolás and Meroño-Cerdán, 2011). Many organizations use IT planning techniques to identify the core knowledge, design KM procedures and implement KM, while KM cannot rely solely on technical approaches because of the multi-dimensional nature of KM (Akram et al., 2015). This challenge reveals the necessity of a specialized strategic planning methodology for KM

one of the most cited KM failure reasons is the lack of strategic planning and poor strategic alignment of these initiatives (Shankar et al., 2003; Ale et al., 2014; Patil and Kant, 2014; Bolisani and Scarso, 2015). Considering that strategic alignment and strategic planning are regarded as the primary requirements of successful KM implementation (Ale et al., 2014; Beiryaei and Jamporazmay, 2010), the main purpose of this paper is to develop a new integrated methodology for KM strategic planning which could be applied as a roadmap for implementation of knowledge initiatives with a strategic approach.

KM is defined as the process of identifying, creating, absorbing and applying organizational knowledge to exploit new opportunities and enhance productivity

KM barriers were grouped in five categories, including knowledge characteristics, knowledge source, knowledge receiver, contextual factor and mechanisms. Patil and Kant (2014) believed that KM barriers can be grouped in strategic barriers, organizational barriers, technological barriers, cultural barriers and individual barriers. They found that strategic barriers were the most important barriers to KM adaptation.

KM strategy is the high-level plan which identifies KM processes, tools and infrastructures and guarantees the effective circulation of knowledge in the organizations.

On the KM focus dimension, KM strategies can be grouped as explicit- oriented and tacit-oriented. On the other dimension, KM strategies can be categorized as internal orientation and external orientation.

Selecting the appropriate KM strategy by considering organizational conditions and business knowledge requirements is a core concern of KM strategic planning methodologies.

Strategic planning of KMS has been important for the following reasons:

better support for business objects
enhancement of integration and consolidation of KMS
appropriate use of KMS to get competitive advantage
prioritization of KMS development projects
better executive supports of KMS operations
decision-making facilitation related to KMS investments
improvement of resource allocation in KM area
prediction of needed resources
improvement of the communication with top managers
identification of key problematic areas

According to APQC’s KM strategic planning methodology, there are seven steps to KM strategic planning success:
- (1) establish organizational goals and strategic objectives for KM;
- (2) identify KM strategies (that support those goals and objectives);
- (3) identify KM priorities;
- (4) confirm the scope for each strategy;
- (5) identify the roles needed and skill requirements for those roles;
  (6) define measures and expectations; and
  (7) assess critical success factors, gaps and potential risks

The first phases of the integrated methodology include internal and external environment analysis of business and KM, which these strategic practices were emphasized by Kim et al. (2003), Beiryaei and Jamporazmay (2010) and Martinsons et al. (2017).

The second main phase is KM strategic orientation which is mentioned by strategic researchers in strategic management and IS strategic planning (Hoque et al., 2016). This phase encompasses activities such as setting KM vision, setting KM mission, identifying strategic knowledge gap, prioritizing knowledge-oriented processes and identifying KM strategy.

The third main phase is KM strategy implementation which is an important phase in strategic planning approaches (Hashim et al., 2015). In this phase, some activities like allocating the KM resources, identifying appropriate KM mechanism, identifying KM processes and developing detailed action plan must be performed to implement strategic formulation in the previous stage.

The last phase of the KM strategic planning methodology is KM strategic control which is considered as the vital phase of the most strategic model (Wiig, 1998). This phase encompasses activities such as identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), evaluation scheduling, reviewing strategic priorities regarding the emerging changes and taking corrective actions.

References

Abou-Zeid, E.S. (2009), “Alignment of business and knowledge management KM strategy”, Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, 2nd ed., Information Science Reference, Hershey, PA, pp. 124-129. doi: 10.4018/978-1-60566-026-4.ch022.

Abu Bakar, A.H., Yusof, M.N., Tufail, M.A. and Virgiyanti, W. (2016), “Effect of knowledge management KM on growth performance in construction industry”, Management Decision, Vol. 54 No. 3, pp. 735-749.

Aidemark, J. (2007), “Strategic planning of knowledge management systems: a problem exploration approach”, Doctoral dissertation, Institutionen för data-och systemvetenskap (tills m KTH).

Ajmal, M., Helo, P. and Kekäle, T. (2010), “Critical factors for knowledge management in project business”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 156-168.

Akhavan, P. and Pezeshkan, A. (2014), “Knowledge management critical failure factors: a multi-case study”, VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 22-41.

Akhavan, P., Reza Zahedi, M., Hosein. and Hosein, S. (2014), “A conceptual framework to address barriers to knowledge management in project-based organizations”, Education, Business and Society: contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, Vol. 7 Nos 2/3, pp. 98-119.

Akram, K., Mehmood, N. and Khan, I. (2015), “A conceptual linkage between knowledge management, competitive advantage and competitive maneuvering of organization”, International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 2250-3153.

Alavi, M. and Leidner, D.E. (2001), “Review: knowledge management KM and knowledge management KM systems: conceptual foundations and research issues”, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 107-136.

Ale, M.A., Toledo, C.M., Chiotti, O. and Galli, M.R. (2014), “A conceptual model and technological support for organizational knowledge management”, Science of Computer Programming, Vol. 95, pp. 73-92.

Al-Shammari, M. (2008), “Toward a knowledge management KM strategic framework in the Arab region”, International Journal of Knowledge Management KM (IJKM), Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 44-63.

Altameem, A.A., Aldrees, A.I. and Alsaeed, N.A. (2014), “Strategic information systems planning (SISP)”, Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science, October, Vol. 1.

Amrollahi, A., Ghapanchi, A.H. and Najaftorkaman, M. (2014), “A generic framework for developing strategic information system plans: insights from past three decades”, PACIS, 2014 December, p. 332.

APQC (2015), “How companies spend on knowledge management”, available at: www.apqc.org/ knowledge-base/documents/how-companies-spend-knowledge-management (accessed 12 October 2017).

APQC (2018), “Strategic planning for knowledge management”, available at: www.apqc.org/knowledge- base/documents/strategic-planning-knowledge-management-community-call (accessed 10 January 2018).

Beiryaei, H.S. and Jamporazmay, M. (2010), August). “Propose a framework for knowledge management KM strategic planning (KMSSP)”, International Conference On Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE), IEEE, Vol. 2, pp. V2-469.

Bolisani, E. and Bratianu, C. (2017), “Knowledge strategy planning: an integrated approach to manage uncertainty, turbulence and dynamics”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 233-253.

Bolisani, E. and Scarso, E. (2015), “Strategic planning approaches to knowledge management: a taxonomy”, VINE, Vol. 45 No. 4, pp. 495-508.

Chen, Y.Y. and Huang, H.L. (2010), The Knowledge Management KM Strategic Alignment Model (KMSAM) and Its Impact on Performance: An Empirical Examination, INTECH, London.

Chen, Y.Y. and Huang, H.L. (2012), “Knowledge management fit and its implications for business performance: a profile deviation analysis”, Knowledge-Based Systems, Vol. 27, pp. 262-270.

Chen, Y.Y., Yeh, S.P. and Huang, H.L. (2012), “Does knowledge management KM ‘fit’ matter to business performance?”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 671-687.

Choi, B., Poon, S.K. and Davis, J.G. (2008), “Effects of knowledge management strategy on organizational performance: a complementarity theory-based approach”, Omega, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 235-251.

David, F.R. and David, F.R. (2015), Strategic Management: concepts and Cases, 15th ed., Prentice Hall, Peaeson.

Dickel, D.G. and de Moura, G.L. (2016), “Organizational performance evaluation in intangible criteria: a model based on knowledge management KM and innovation management”, RAI Revista De Administração e Inovação, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 211-220.

Donate, M.J. and Canales, J.I. (2012), “A new approach to the concept of knowledge strategy”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 22-44.

Donate, M.J. and de Pablo, J.D.S. (2015), “The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in knowledge management KM practices and innovation”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 68 No. 2, pp. 360-370.

Ekionea, J.P.B. and Swain, D.E. (2008), “Developing and aligning a knowledge management KM strategy: towards a taxonomy and a framework”, International Journal of Knowledge Management KM (IJKM), Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 29-45.

Farzaneh, N. and Shamizanjani, M. (2014), “Storytelling for project knowledge management across the project life cycle”, Knowledge Management & E-Learning, Vol. 6 No. 1, p. 83.

Greiner, M.E., Böhmann, T. and Krcmar, H. (2007), “A strategy for knowledge management”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 11 No. 6, pp. 3-15.

Hashim, S.N., Abdullah, R. and Ibrahim, H. (2015), August). “Collaborative knowledge management KM system strategic planning (CKMS 2 P): a systematic literature review”, 4th International Conference on Software Engineering and Computer Systems (ICSECS), IEEE, pp. 55-60.

Hoque, M.R., Hossin, M.E. and Khan, W. (2016), “Strategic information systems planning (SISP) practices in health care sectors of Bangladesh”, European Scientific Journal, Vol. 12 No. 6.

Kamara, J.M., Anumba, C.J. and Carrillo, P.M. (2002), “A CLEVER approach to selecting a knowledge management KM strategy”, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 205-211.

Kargaran, S., Jami Pour, M. and Moeini, H. (2017), “Successful customer knowledge management implementation through social media capabilities”, VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, Vol. 47 No. 3, pp. 353-371.

Kim, T.H., Lee, J.N., Chun, J.U. and Benbasat, I. (2014), “Understanding the effect of knowledge management strategies on knowledge management performance: a contingency perspective”, Information and Management, Vol. 51 No. 4, pp. 398-416.

Kim, Y.G., Yu, S.H. and Lee, J.H. (2003), “Knowledge strategy planning: methodology and case”, Expert Systems with Applications, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 295-307.

Liebowitz, J. (2016), Successes and Failures of Knowledge Management, Morgan Kaufmann, Burlington, MA.

Lin, C., Wu, J.C. and Yen, D.C. (2012), “Exploring barriers to knowledge flow at different knowledge management maturity stages”, Information & Management, Vol. 49 No. 1, pp. 10-23.

Lopez-Nicolás, C. and Meroño-Cerdán, Á.L. (2011), “Strategic knowledge management, innovation and performance”, International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 502-509.

Lu, W. (2017), “Knowledge management in organizations”, Proceedings of 12th International Conference, KMO 2017, Beijing, 21-24 August, Springer.

Martinsons, M.G., Davison, R.M. and Huang, Q. (2017), “Strategic knowledge management failures in small professional service firms in China”, International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 327-338.

Mládková, L. (2014), “Knowledge strategy: key player or relict of the past?”, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 150, pp. 628-636.

Nazim, M. and Mukherje, B. (2011), “Implementing knowledge management KM in indian academic libraries”, Journal of Knowledge Management KM Practice, Vol. 12 No. 3.

Oluikpe, P. (2012), “Developing a corporate knowledge management KM strategy”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 16 No. 6, pp. 862-878.

Parlby, D. and Taylor, R. (2000), “The power of knowledge: a business guide to knowledge management”, Online, cited.

Perçin, S. (2010), “Use of analytic network process in selecting knowledge management strategies”, Management Research Review, Vol. 33 No. 5, pp. 452-471.

Rhem, A. (2015), “Why do knowledge management (KM) programs and projects fail?”, KM Institute, 22 September, available at: www.Kminstitute.Org/blog/why-do-knowledgemanagement-km- programs-and-project-fail

Ribiere, V. and Walter, C. (2013), “10 years of KM theory and practices”, Knowledge Management KM Research & Practice, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 4-9.

Rouhani, S. and Savoji, S.R. (2016), “A success assessment model for BI tools implementation: an empirical study of banking industry”, International Journal of Business Intelligence Research (IJBIR), Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 25-44.

Shankar, R., Singh, M.D., Gupta, A. and Narain, R. (2003), “Strategic planning for knowledge management KM implementation in engineering firms”, Work Study, Vol. 52 No. 4, pp. 190-200.

Sherif, K. (2006), “An adaptive strategy for managing knowledge in organizations”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 72-80.

Shujahat, M., Hussain, S., Javed, S., Malik, M.I., Thurasamy, R. and Ali, J. (2017), “Strategic management model with lens of knowledge management and competitive intelligence: a review approach”, VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 55-93.

Wang, J., Ding, D., Liu, O. and Li, M. (2016), “A synthetic method for knowledge management KM performance evaluation based on triangular fuzzy number and group support systems”, Applied Soft Computing, Vol. 39, pp. 11-20.

Wheelen, T.L. (2011), Strategic Management and Business Policy: Toward Global Sustainability, 13 ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Wiig, K. (1998), “The role of knowledge-based system in knowledge management”, Workshop on knowledge management KM and at US Dept. of Labor, Washington, DC.

Yosua, A. and Tjakraatmadja, J.H. (2015), “Assessment and planning of knowledge management KM at PT dirgantara Indonesia (persero)”, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 169, pp. 109-124.

Zack, M. (2002), “Developing a knowledge strategy”, The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge, Oxford university press, Oxford.

Zhao, J., de Pablos, P.O. and Qi, Z. (2012), “Enterprise knowledge management KM model based on China’s practice and case study”, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 324-330.

Further reading

Becerra-Fernandez, I. and Sabherwal, R. (2014), Knowledge Management: Systems and Processes, Routledge.

Peppard, J. and Ward, J. (2004), “Beyond strategic information systems: towards an IS capability”, The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 167-194.

Review of The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World

In The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World by Dominique Moisi the author claims that he’s chosen to write this work in opposition to the optimism of Francis Fukuyama and the pessimism of Samuel Huntington. While geopolitics has traditionally been defined in relation to geography, Moisi uses a number of examples to highlight the need to include an “emotional geography” of those that populate a region within geopolitical investigations. Moisi believes that the three most powerful emotions to assess in order to create a psycho-analytic profile of a national spirit are Hope, Humiliation and Fear. Using this as a framework, Moisi assesses a number of the controversial issues prevalent in modern politics. Worth noting in this introduction is that when looking for other reviews of this work, there are few written by those in the field of geopolitics and far more written by those in performance studies, literary analysis, gender studies, psychology and sociology.

Defining Hope, Humiliation and Fear

Moisi’s choice to focus on geopolitics from the standpoint of emotions stems from his assessment that collective sentiments towards past events, their relation to the present and what is possible in the future all have a strong connections to confidence.

Hope, Humiliation and Fear are all linked to the notion of confidence – a defining factor in the manner in which national bodies address other national bodies, international bodies and their own people.

Fear is the absence of confidence, hope is an expression of confidence and humiliation is injured confidence. Moisi provides a formula for quickly summarizing them:

Hope is “I want to do it, I can do it, and I will do it”
Humiliation is “I can never do it”, which may lead to “I might try as well to destroy you since I cannot join you. ”
Fear: “Oh my god, the world has becomes such a dangerous place; how can I be protected from it?”

One of the anecdotes that I found compelling in showing how it is that emotional valences get consideration within the diplomatic-cores of nations was the government of China’s decision to change their description of themselves from “rising” to “developing” as the former implicates that there will be conflict between them and established power while the latter does not.

From these definitions, Moisi then proceeds to analyze Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and America according to this rubric. Those that are hopeful are those that have accommodated themselves to this system, those that feel humiliated it are those that have yet to maximize their domestic capacities to do so while those that fear it seem to take an anti-globalization stance which is strongly related to a sense of national or ethnic pride.

Methodological Criticism

While there is certainly value in a number of Moisi’s insights, from a methodological standpoint there is a lot lacking. Even if the claims he makes are intuitively sensible, he provides no real method for determining which indicators are valuable and which are not, no comprehensive process for correctly discerning the emotional valences of a nation and no steps for qualifying intra-national emotional variances (i.e. defining the Opposition/different interpretations of historical/current events).

True, he states in the opening of the text that confidence indicator can be mapped by things such as level of investment, spending patterns and surveys – he neither provides any comprehensive manner for weighing these or other factors nor describes a model other than his own subjective views on issues. This is in sharp contrast to business confidence – an indicator charted by numerous organizations (OECD; the NFIB Business Optimism Index; RMB/BER Business Confidence Index (BCI), etc.) that emerge from scientifically-based survey and analysis.

Globalization, Identity and Emotions

Despite this epistemological weakness, Moisi’s positions ought not to be automatically invalidated. He provides enough case studies wherein emotions are exploited by politicians, diplomats and businessmen are able to mobilize emotions towards the execution of specific activities. One can also look to the words that politicians and geopolitical strategies themselves say – be it Hugo Chavez or Alexander Dugin – and see that frequently it is their emotional appeals that get the support in the forms of votes or a reading audience.

One of the primary anxieties affecting confidence via the emotions is the relationship of national economic structures to the New World Order created following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the transition to a bi-polar world and the transformation of the United States into the global hegemon. It’s following these changes on the world stages that Moisi focuses upon.

The World in 2025

Published in 2009, the last chapter of the book is spent speculating on describing how he sees the emotional developments that Moisi describes as manifesting in the world. A few pages in, it immediately becomes apparent just how problematic the lack of a clear methodology for emotional vigilance and future-planning are – the views provided are so far from what has happened that at multiple times during the chapter I considered skipping it. Moisi forecast a rapid decline of the European union following sub-national revolts (i.e. Calatonia) and national revolts (U.K.) in the early 2010’s followed by its rapid reawakening and expansion (Serbia, Kosovo, etc.) in 2016. Not only has this not happened – Serbia, Turkey, and other still have not transitioned – but at least at the moment is seems as if the European Union project is in a state of decline stemming from lack of national support and existential anxieties on how to define itself in relation to Russian political manipulations and a massive influx of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.

Moisi also believed that China would invade Taiwan in the early 2010’s and that the United States would be “mature” enough to take a hands off approach. While few projected Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election – it’s worth noting that in a number of U.S. poles one of the reasons that he gained such popular support was that there were wide swathes of the American public that even without all of the evidence ready to martial were aware that China had been gaming the financial and manufacturing rules to cause damage to the American economy via every manner possible, be it industrial espionage, dumping or non-enforcement of labor laws. Thus we see here that though China may have historicized their “century of humiliation” and be classified according to Moisi under the banner of “optimism” – which is justifiable considering how many of the country’s population have seen their standards of living increase, a sense of fear a humiliation still guides their actions. And this here is the problem of his account – lacking a specific means by which to determine specific classes of people as having specific emotional attitudes towards things, an “emotional” accounting of geopolitics for guiding policy-making is highly prone to error.

Review of Saving the Americas: The Dangerous Decline of Latin America and What The U.S. Must Do

Saving the Americas: The Dangerous Decline of Latin America and What The U.S. Must Doby Andres Oppenheimer’s books is so masterful a work of investigation into issues of economic, political and social innovation in the context of globalization that I’m now interested in familiarizing myself with the rest of his published work.

The thesis of this book is that while many other parts of the world – such as Ireland, Asia, India – have been able to successfully adjust themselves to the new technological and economic imperatives created by globalization, Latin America has lagged behind. It’s not that the political and economic leaderships within LatAm haven’t felt the need for change – they face declining prices for commodities, rising costs for foreign goods and services, and difficulty gaining anything close to the amount of foreign capital received by the “winners” in the globalization – it’s that they seem stuck in a haughty provincialist populism that is inherently suspicious of anything that they think may harm their sovereignty, be they bi- or multi-national economic agreements or changes to social welfare policies that were barely sustainable when they were first passed and are now burdens that hangs on government expenditure like it was an albatross.

Given the access to politicians and businessmen his role as journalist provides him, Oppenheimer is also able to provide a human context to the trade agreements and international diplomacy in a compassionate manner that allows the reader to see how the personality quirks and worldviews of leaders can have a tremendous impact on the manner in which they get resolved. This perspective is not limited to the Latin American leaders, but also within the United States. The description of the pre-9/11 leadership presents the U.S. government as largely aloof towards all of Latin America and the Caribbean, with the exception of Haiti and Colombia, despite Brazil’s economic might and the possibility for mutually-beneficial economic development. Given Chavez’s disdain for Bush due to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the latter’s apparent readiness to create new partnerships in Latin America, it’s interesting to wonder what would have transpired between them had the terrorist attack not occurred.

The Opening to Capitalism on America’s Nautical Borders

Oppenheimer opens his book on Latin American by examining a number of Asian and European globalizatio success stories. These are the foils to the case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico which, in his assessment, have not been able to reach the special “sweet spot” that leads to annual rates of growth higher than 5%.

His assessment of Latin American is not good, and shows how their social and economic policies have not kept pace with the needed changes in a manner sufficient enough to create the high annual growth of their competitors.

Argentina

The portrait Oppenheimer presents of Kirchner as the leader of a nation is not at all flattering, but neither does he receive the type of dismissiveness that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro receives. In light of his leadership abilities, he is presented almost as a tragic figure in nation which constantly cycles between political extremes. Kirchner, for example, is described as canceling the FTAA negotiations with the United States out of purely personal reasons and breaking schedules talks with other presidents out of antipathy.

Given this description of leadership, Oppenheimer’s description of Kirchner and his supporters as suffering from Maradona Syndrome is apt. Kirchner’s “K Style” may have done much to bolster their emotional needs, but from a practical standpoint it was a failure.

Venezuela

Oppenheimer describes Chavez’s rule as that of a narcissist-Leninist revolution. The image of his arriving to a trade conference in a private jet that he paid millions over cost with a huge entourage of lackey’s was compelling evidence in lights of this. The irregular hours he worked, his lack of self-management skills, the poor manner in which he treats his subordinates, his inability to plan at a macro-economic level and his inability to think deeply on a number of important issues – a claim made by his former mentor and host for several years following his release from prison – are just some of the reasons that helps explain how the economy in Venezuela, once the strongest in the region, became ruined.

Mexico

It is a type of political paralysis which seems to prevent Mexico from getting over the hump needed to achieve a level of dynamism and innovation within their economy. The multi-party system inhibits the enactment of progressive change as there are always those that want to see someone and their policies fail.

Given AMLO is now the president of Mexico, I found the extended background on him to be very interesting. While clearly a passionate politician able to mobilize a large support based – the picture presented does not inspire the sort of confidence required in the age of globalization.

Oppenheimer’s analysis of UNAM – the Autonomous University of Mexico was for me – a former professor and someone that takes professionalization standards seriously – quite shocking. That there are schools within this university – such as the social and political sciences – that categorically refuse to engage with accreditation organizations or professional review boards would be amusing as an example of hubris were it not for the fact that it’s so sad that so much money is wasted as Mexico – unlike Communist China – subsidizes it’s students. Perhaps this is why UNAM students are described as needing more years to graduate college than other countries. More than that, the country is not preparing their population neither for the needs of the knowledge economy NOR for that of the industries which provide high wages – the university graduates 15 times as many therapists as petroleum engineers.

Latin America

One of Oppenheimer’s recurring pieces of advice, which is echoed by his numerous interlocutors involved in the institutional bodies being described, are the benefits of supranational bodies in assisting with political and economic policies. In the populist rhetoric of Latin America this is viewed as the giving up of sovereignty, a preciously valued concept for el pueblo – but the fact that those that have done this are those within the opening success stories seems to be a fact lost on Nationalists and Bolivarians alike.

Regional agreements, such as MercoSur, are agreed upon but according to conditions that removes the capacity to lead to dynamic economic growth. Political support is to be found between nations, but it’s not to reinforce stability and to ensure the rule of law but done by Chavez in order to create pockets of politicians dependent on his largesse and good intentions – which he does not have.

In short, while trade agreements may change – the knowledge economy is now recognized as one of the primary drivers for economic growth and the Latin American focus on the past isn’t helping it have a clear vision for the future. In a geopolitical context where those able to demonstrate their capacity to add value to companies through their knowledge will flee to countries that value such skills, modern governments need to both help create more of such people and provide incentives to stay and apply themselves within their nation of birth. Access to resources and low wages are no longer sufficient – but are sometimes seen as a reason to avoid foreign investment. After all, if you wanted to invest in a research park or a factory that required a large number of complex, technical tasks to complete, where would you invest: Finland, which has 5,000 scientists per million people, or Argentina – with only 712, or Chile with 370 or Mexico, with 225. Given the trajectory of Revolution 4.0, Latin America – they face the choice of rapidly playing catch up or seeing themselves unable to do anything other than provide primary goods or produce light-manufacturing.

English Translation of “Uses and Abuses of Scientometrics”

Uses and abuses of Scientometrics

The production of original research articles, and the number of citations they generate in international indices, have become the ordinary indicators to measure the contribution of each researcher to the scientific work.

Miguel Ángel Pérez Angón Senior Researcher in the Department of Physics at Cinvestav, he was the founding editor of the Atlas of Mexican Science and the Latin American Catalog of Programs and Human Resources in Physics.

1. Scientometrics
In the last five years the Mexican government apparatus has been consistent in applying the maxim that the social contribution of science and technology is not so clear and much less direct. As a result, federal support for scientific activities has declined significantly. Consistent with this attitude, government delicacy to quantify the impact of its science and technology programs is increasingly evident. In this context, most national institutions have consolidated the culture of evaluation and monitoring of research carried out by their groups of researchers. In particular, the production of original research articles, and the number of citations they generate in international indexes, have become the ordinary indicators to measure the contribution of each researcher at the scientific task.

In this state of affairs, we have become accustomed to using two terms almost as synonyms but it is convenient to define more precisely: bibliometry and Scientometrics. Bibliometry is restricted to the study of research products published in scientific literature, mainly articles in journals, and the citations generated in journals included in the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). Instead, Scientometrics aims to cover a much broader field than bibliometry and includes the analysis of other factors that may be determining factors for the development of scientific activity: number of researchers, their geographical or specialty distribution, sources of financing, productivity. and repercussion, etc. It is in this last sense that we will use this term in this article.

2. Uses
The use of Scientometric Indicators is increasingly common in developed countries to define their policies to support scientific and technological activities. For us, the analyzes carried out in countries such as Brazil, Spain, China or India are of greater interest (1). In all these cases, the constant increase in the scientific production of its researchers and the interest in reaching the levels of researchers in developed countries stand out. For example, in the case of Spanish science, they were interested in knowing in which areas and specialties their production and impact indicators are comparable or superior to those of the rest of the countries of the European Union.

In our country, CONACyT has systematically published several indicators on scientific activity in Mexico and in some other countries (2). However, the data published by CONACyT are global and are not broken down by area or specialty and even less by institution. With the idea of covering this deficiency, the Mexican Academy of Sciences created in 2002 the Atlas of Mexican Science (ACM). The goal of this project was to integrate statistical databases on all areas of science that are cultivated in our country and make them accessible to all users of scientific activity. This program only had two years of activity but in that period it was possible to generate ample and detailed statistical information on ten areas of Mexican science: biological, physical, chemical, land sciences, agricultural sciences and biotechnology, medicine and health sciences, mathematics, geosciences, social sciences and humanities (3).

The information generated by the ACM is very complete and reliable thanks to the feedback that was received from the scientific community and from the institutions of higher education and research. In particular, there are data on the academic plant (institutional affiliation, academic seniority, productivity and impact, composition by gender, level of studies, nationality and specialty), and on the degree and postgraduate study programs (enrollment, new entry , egress, terminal efficiency), but in the latter case only for some of the ten areas covered by the ACM.

To give an idea of the possible uses of the indicators generated by the ACM, I will mention some of those obtained in the case of physical sciences – one of the areas best covered by this program. Figure 1 includes the evolution of the scientific production (articles in the international indexes) of the ten areas studied in the period 1980-1999. Among them, the increase in production in physical sciences stands out by a factor of six in this period (from 200 to 1200 articles). This increase corresponds to the constant growth of researchers with a doctorate in this area of knowledge (in 1987 only 337 were registered and by 2003 they were 12363). The data collected by the ACM also suggests a possible explanation of why Mexican physicists became the most productive scientific guild in the country in such a short period: it is the most homogeneous group in academic training (there is a minimum of researchers who have only finished his master’s or bachelor’s degree studies) and that he has been subject to a stimulating process of geographical de-concentration: in 1987, 70% of the PhD researchers were assigned to the institutions located in Mexico City, and by 2003 this number already It had been reduced to 35%. It should be noted that this process occurred within the broad growth of the academic plant at the national level and not due to a simple decrease of researchers in the institutions of the metropolitan area of Mexico City. For example, in 1987, UNAM had 51% of doctoral researchers (169, and at that time all were concentrated in CU), but by 2003 they were only 36.5% (451) and those located in CU corresponded to 27.8% (343). Another factor that stands out from the data generated in the ACM is the level of international collaboration that Mexican physicists have achieved and that has allowed them to achieve levels of visibility in the international environment that only biomedical researchers had achieved before: the number of articles published In the decade of the nineties that have generated more than one hundred citations is greater than those generated at this level by the biomedical community. Many of these articles were produced from international collaborations in the large laboratories of particle accelerators and astronomical observation centers (4). A similar situation occurs in the area of geosciences, where some of the most cited articles were published based on the participation of Mexican scientists in international groups that have explored the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan or have conducted studies through perception techniques remotely operated with terrestrial satellites.

There is another very interesting fact that arises from the data included in Figure 1: from the creation of the National System of Researchers (SNI) in 1984, practically all areas initiate a consolidation process and its annual production of scientific articles It increases steadily. This effect has already been detected in other Scientometric analyzes (5) and is a transparent example of the positive uses of Scientometrics.

3. Abuses
We already mentioned some of the uses and applications of the data generated in Scientometrics, all of them located in the macro sphere of science and technology. Scientometric abuses appear precisely when some macro-type results are applied at the micro level, that is, to the evaluation of researchers individually. There is a large literature on the disadvantages of this procedure (6), I will only mention a few of them below:

• The international productivity or citation averages cover very general areas and in most cases do not correspond to the lines of work of individual researchers. These averages vary over time and this possibility is not contemplated in the institutional regulations used to promote or hire researchers.
• The impact factors determined for the journals included in the international indexes vary year by year, and consequently the list of “the best journals in the specialty” is also variable (7).
• There are good quality journals that are not included in the international indexes, particularly in areas such as mathematics, social sciences and humanities. For this type of magazine there is no information on its impact factors, immediacy indexes, etc.

Perhaps the main abuse of Scientometric Indicators occurs in institutions where they are taken strictly in the promotion and contracting processes. In most high-level institutions, academic evaluations are determined by specialists who know the specific topics of interest of the researchers evaluated (the famous peer evaluation) and the data generated by the scientometric analyzes are considered only as support material in the evaluation process. But due to the intensity and frequency with which the evaluation of academic work is carried out in Mexico, the majority of the opinion committees are not familiar with all the issues addressed by the researchers to be evaluated, and then the scientometric indicators become the norm that all researchers who want to be promoted or hired must meet. This, in turn, has generated new evaluation procedures to analyze the appeals of researchers who disagree with the results of their own evaluation. There is also an aberrant use of bibliometric indicators when they are used for exclusively administrative purposes, but I prefer not to dwell on it.

4. The INEGI of science
Like many other developing countries, Mexico does not have clear policies to encourage the systematic compilation of statistical databases on national science. The case of Mexican science is really pathetic and we can illustrate it with two recently published editorials in international circulation magazines that have referred to the state of science in our country. In the first case, published in the American Scientist (8) magazine, Mexican science is well argued because despite how modest our contribution is to the total number of articles

From research published worldwide, it turns out that among the 348 foreign members of the US National Academy of Sciences, seven are Mexican, a much larger number than researchers from Brazil, China or India. In contrast, in the second case, the editorial published in the journal Nature Medicine of September 5 (9) criticizes the performance of Mexican scientists. According to the editors of this magazine, although support for Mexican science is sufficient for the number of Mexican researchers and according to US standards, per capita production and the impact of Mexican science are much lower than those of American science. However, this editorial or the number of Nature Medicine corresponding to that date does not include data that support such a drastic conclusion. Unfortunately, there is no source of statistical information in our country that could refute the argument published in this magazine.

As I conclude this article, I hope to have presented enough arguments about the need to create, and preserve, the INEGI (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics) of Mexican science, or some instance that would allow us to have updated statistical data on the state that keeps Mexican science at all times. These data could be used by science administrators to carry out real planning exercises of our scientific activity, by researchers interested in studying the dynamics of our scientific activity, or by the higher education and research institutions themselves to provide feedback on their academic evaluation processes. Simply put, to encourage the correct use of Scientometrics.

[References]

1 I. Castro-Moreira, Science 301, 141 (2003); D.A. King, Nature 430, 311 (2004); M. Sánchez-Ayuso, reporte del CSIC, http://www.csic.es/hispano/preside/preside4/infor4.htm; J. Mervis, J. Kinoshita, Science 270, 1131 (1995).
2 CONACyT, Indicadores de actividades científicas y tecnológicas,
http://www.conacyt.mx/indicadores.htm.
3 Atlas de la Ciencia Mexicana, http://www.amc.unam.mx/atlas.htm.
4 F. Collazo-Reyes, M.E. Luna-Morales, J.M. Russell, Scientometrics 60, 131
(2004).
5 C. González-Brambila, F. Veloso, reporte de la U. Carnegie Mellon
(2005).
6 Véase, por ejemplo, P.O. Seglen, BMJ 314, 497 (1997); J.W. Grossman,
Notices AMS, 52, 35 (2005); A.F.J. Van Raan, Scientiometrics 62, 133 (2005); N.C. Lin, Y. Cheng, L. Lin, Scientiometrics 64, 101 (2005); J.A. Tallin, Basic Clinical Pharmacol. Toxicol. 97, 261 (2005); D. Adam, Avance y Perspectiva 21, 181 (2002).
7 M.H. Magri, A. Solari, Scientometrics 37, 35 (1996). 8 F.J. Ayala, Am. Scientist 93, 2 (2005).
9 Nature Medicine 11, 907 (2005).

English Translation of “Local y Global: La gestión de las ciudades en la era de la información”

LOCAL AND GLOBAL:
THE MANAGEMENT OF CITIES IN THE ERA OF THE INFORMATION

from The Multicultural City

Jordi Borja and Manuel Castells

Our world is ethnically and culturally diverse and cities concentrate and express this diversity. Faced with the homogeneity affirmed and imposed by the State throughout history, most civil societies have historically constituted from a multiplicity of ethnicities and cultures that have generally resisted bureaucratic pressures towards normalization cultural and ethnic cleansing. Even in societies such as the Japanese or the Spanish, ethnically very homogeneous, regional cultural differences (or nationals, in the Spanish case), territorially marked traditions and forms of specific lives, are reflected in diverse behavior patterns and, sometimes, in intercultural tensions and conflicts (1). The management of these tensions, the construction of coexistence in respecting differences, are some of the most important challenges that all societies have had and now face. The concentrated expression of that cultural diversity, with it’s resulting tensions and the wealth of possibilities that diversity also contains preferably in cities, receptacle and melting pot of cultures, are combined via the construction of a common citizen project.

In the last years of the twentieth century, the globalization of the economy and acceleration of the urbanization process have increased the ethnic and cultural plurality of cities, through migration processes, national to international, that lead to the interpenetration of disparate populations and ways of life in the space of the main metropolitan areas of the world. The global is local, in a socially segmented and spatially segregated way, by human displacement caused by the destruction of old ways and the creation of new productive activity centers. The territorial differentiation of the two processes, that of creation and destruction, increases the uneven development between regions and between countries, and introduces a diversity growing in the urban social structure. In this article, we will analyze the process of formation of ethnic-cultural diversity in its new manifestations and the consequences of such diversity for the management of cities.

Globalization, migration and urbanization

The acceleration of the urbanization process in the world is largely due to the increase in rural-urban migrations, frequently due to the expulsion of labor from agriculture due to sectoral modernization, is also the consequence of the processes of industrialization and of growth of the informal economy in the metropolitan areas of the countries undergoing development (2). Although statistics vary by country, estimates offended for a number of developing countries indicate that, on average, while in 1960-70, the contribution of rural-urban emigration turban growth was 36.6%, in 1975-90, it increased to 40% of the new urban population. The contribution to metropolitan growth, in both cases, was even greater (3). In almost all countries, the incorporation into the cities of emigrants from rural areas significantly accentuates cultural diversity and, in ethnically diverse countries, such as the United States or Brazil, ethnic diversity.

Africa

Globalization has also caused significant population displacements between countries, although international migration presents a pattern complex that does not follow stereotyped visions of public opinion. So, almost half of the 80 million internationals around the world are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East (4). About 35 million migrants are in sub-Saharan Africa, representing 8% of their total population. These migratory movements in Africa are of two types: on the one hand, migrations of workers, aimed at the countries of greatest economic dynamism, particularly to South Africa, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Nigeria. On the other hand, large displacements of hunger refugees, the war and genocide, in the Sahel, in the horn of Africa, in Mozambique, in Rwanda and Burundi, among other areas: in 1987 alone they were estimated at 12.6 million people displaced by wars or catastrophes in Africa (5). In Asia, Malaysia is the country with the highest immigration, with almost one million foreign workers, generally from Indonesia. Japan counts also with close to a million foreigners and several thousand illegal workers whose number is increasing rapidly, although the most foreigners are Koreans living in Japan for several generations. Singapore has about 300,000 immigrants, which represents high proportion of its population, and Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, with Quotas below 100,000 each. However, to the extent that that the development of these countries be accentuated and the demographic pressure increase in China, India and Indonesia, an increase in migration is expected international, in addition to the increase in rural-urban migration throughout Asia. Thus, Japan in 1975 had an annual immigration of about 10,000 foreigners, while in 1990, that figure had increased to about 170,000 per year, mostly from Korea (6).

Latin America
Latin America, land of immigration during the twentieth century, has become a place of emigration. During the 1950-64 period the region as a whole had a net balance of migrations of + 1.8 million people, while in 1976-85, the balance was negative: – 1.6 million. The most significant changes were the drastic reduction of immigration in Argentina and the sharp increase of emigration in Mexico and Central America, particularly to the United States. Latin American immigration movements at the end of the century come generally from other Latin American countries. Thus, in Uruguay in 1991, of total of resident foreigners, 40% were from Argentina, 29% from Brazil and the11% of Chile. The highest proportion of foreign population occurs in Venezuela (7.2%), followed by Argentina (6.8%).

In more developed countries, in Western Europe and in the United States, there is a feeling among the population of an unprecedented arrival of immigrants in the last decade, of an authentic invasion in the terminology of some media outlets. However, the data shows a reality different, variable according to countries and historical moments (7).

Uneven development worldwide, economic and cultural globalization, and transport systems favor an intense transfer of populations. Then add the exoduses caused by wars and catastrophes, as well as, in Europe, the pressure of populations of the countries of the East that now enjoy freedom of traveling while suffering the impact of the economic crisis. But the immigration controls, strengthening borders between the countries of “them” and the rest of the world, the reduced creation of jobs in European leads to growing xenophobia in all societies. They represent obstacles formidable for population transfer that could result from trends alluded to. Let’s see, then, what is the real profile of recent migrations from the South and East to North and West.

U.S
In the United States, a society formed by successive waves of immigration, has effectively produced a significant increase in immigrants in absolute numbers since the immigration law reform in 1965, authorizing immigration by family reunification. But still, the current immigration levels are well behind the historical point reached between 1905 and 1914 (year when 1.2 million immigrants arrived in the United States). Moreover, in terms of proportion of the population, in 1914 those 1.2 million were equivalent to 1.5% of the population, while the total of 1992 immigrants represented only 0.3% of the population. Now what has changed substantially is the ethnic composition of immigration, which instead of coming from Europe and Canada, it now comes, for the most part, from Mexico, the Caribbean and other Latin American countries and Asia.

A similar phenomenon has taken place in the other two countries that are characterized, together with the United States, for having the highest proportion of foreign immigrants in its population, Canada and Australia. In Canada, in1992, more than 40% came from Asia, in particular from Hong Kong, and only a2.8% of the United Kingdom. Vancouver, the third largest Canadian city, has been transformed in the last decade by the arrival of 110,000 Chinese from Hong Kong, raising the proportion of Chinese population to 27% of residents of the city. Incidentally, such immigration has meant an influx of $4,000,000 per year in the local economy. As for Australia, in the 1990s, 21% of the population was born abroad and 40% have at least one parent was born abroad. Of the new immigrants arrived in Australia in1992, 51% came from Asia.

Europe
Western Europe presents a diversified picture in terms of migration movements. Using the percentage of population as an indicator foreign resident over the total population and observing its evolution between 1950 and 1990, we can verify, for example, that France and England had smaller proportion of the foreign population in 1990 than in 1982, while that Belgium and Spain had hardly varied (from 9.0 to 9.1%, and from 1.1 to 1.1%). Except the anomalous case of Luxembourg, the only European country whose foreign population exceeds 10% is Switzerland – also a special case because of the high degree of internationalization of its economy. And the average for the total of the European population is only 4.5% of foreigners. Increases significant during the eighties were mainly in Germany, Austria, Holland and Sweden, mainly due to the influence of Eastern European refugees. But also this influence seems to be much more limited from what Western European countries feared. So, for example, a European Commission report in 1991 estimated that 25 million citizens of Russia and the Soviet republics could emigrate to Western Europe before the year 2000. And yet, in the mid-1990s, it estimates that Russian emigration oscillates around 200,000 people per year, despite the horrific economic crisis that Russia is experiencing. The reason, for those they know the mechanisms of emigration, its simple: emigrants move through previously established contact networks. That’s why it’s the colonial metropolis that receives waves of immigrants from their former colonies (France and the Maghreb); or countries that deliberately recruited handoff cheap work in selected countries (Germany in Turkey and Yugoslavia) that continue to be the destination of emigrants from those countries. Instead, the Russians and ex-Soviets, having been banned from traveling for seven decades, lack support networks in emigration countries, with the exception of Jewish minority – which is precisely the one that emigrates. So, leaving family and country and launching into a hostile world without a support network is something that is only decided on a massive scale when a catastrophe forces it (famine, war, Nazism).

Now, if the data indicate that immigration in Western Europe does not reaches proportions as massive as those perceived in public opinion, why then that feeling? And why the social alarm? What really is happening is the increasing transformation of the ethnic composition of European societies, from imported immigrants during the period of high economic growth in the sixties. Indeed, the rates of fertility of foreigners are far higher than those of their European countries of residence (except, significantly, in Luxembourg and Switzerland, where the most foreigners are of European origin). For demographic reasons the fertility differential will continue to increase over time. This is the true source of social tension: the growing ethnic diversity of a Europe that has not yet assumed such diversity and is still talking about immigrants when, more and more, they are actually nationals of non-European ethnic origin. The population increase in the United Kingdom between 1981 and 1990 was only 1% for whites, while it was 23% for ethnic minorities. Even so, whites are 51,847 million, while minorities only represent 2,614 million. But there exists a clear awareness of the inevitable process of setting up a society with important ethnic minorities, like the American model. Something similar happens in other European countries. Two thirds of foreigners from France and three quarters of those from Germany and Holland are of non-European origin. To this we must add, in the case of France, the growing proportion of population of non-European origin born in France that have the right to nationality upon reaching 18 years. It can also happen, as is the case in Germany, that the law denies the right to nationality to those born in the national territory of foreign parents, a situation in which hundreds of thousands of young Turks find themselves They never knew a land other than Germany. But the cost of such defense of notions of native nationality is the creation of a permanent caste of not-citizens, which can be used an infernal mechanism of social hostility. An additional factor is important in the perception of an ethnic diversity that goes far beyond the direct impact of immigration: the spatial concentration space of ethnic minorities in cities, particularly in large cities and in specific neighborhoods of large cities, where they reach constitute even the majority of the population. The spatial segregation of the city based on ethnic and cultural characteristics of the population, is not inheritance of a discriminatory past, but a feature of increasing importance, characteristic of our societies: the era of global information is also that of local segregation.

Ethnic diversity, social discrimination and urban segregation
In all societies, ethnic minorities suffer economic, institutional and cultural discrimination, which usually results in segregation in the city space. Income inequality and discriminatory practices in the housing market leads to the disproportionate concentration of ethnic minorities in certain urban areas within metropolitan areas. On the other hand, defensive reaction and cultural specificity reinforce the spatial segregation pattern, to the extent that each group ethnic tends to use its concentration in neighborhoods as a form of protection, mutual help and affirmation of its specificity. There is thus a double process of urban segregation: on the one hand, of ethnic minorities with respect to the group dominant ethnic; on the other hand, of the different ethnic minorities among them. Naturally, this spatial differentiation must be understood in terms statistical and symbolic, that is, as a disproportionate concentration of certain ethnic groups in certain spaces, rather than as residence exclusive to each group in each neighborhood. Even in borderline situations of urban racial segregation, as was the apartheid regime in South Africa, we can observe a strong socio-spatial differentiation, in terms of class, to from the moment the mandatory segregation is dismantled Institutionally imposed.

The best known and most studied urban ethnic segregation model is that of the American cities, which persists throughout the history of the United States and that has been reinforced in the last two decades, with the location of new immigrants in their corresponding segregated minority ethnic spaces, constituting true ethnic enclaves in the main areas metropolitan and thus denying in historical practice the famous myth of melting pot that is only applicable (and with limitations) to the populations of European origin (8). For example, in Los Angeles County, 70 of the 78 existing municipalities in 1970 had less than 10% of residents belonging to ethnic minorities. In contrast, in 1990 the 88 municipalities that by then made up the county had more than 10% ethnic minorities, but 42 municipalities had more than 50% ethnic minorities in their population (9).

Spatial concentration
The complete study by Massey and Denton (1993) on racial segregation urban in North American cities shows high levels of segregation between blacks and whites in all the big cities. Out of an index of absolute segregation of 100, the average is 68.3, which rises to an average of 80.1 for the northern metropolitan areas. The three main areas are they are also among the most segregated: New York, with an index of 82; Los Angeles, with 81.1; and Chicago with 87.8. Also the insulation index of blacks, which measures the interaction between blacks and other black groups (100 being the level of absolute isolation) reflects high values, with an average of 63.5, which rises to 66.1 in the northern areas and arrives to register in Chicago a 82.8 index.

The spatial concentration of disadvantaged ethnic minorities leads to creating true black holes of the urban social structure, which mutually reinforces poverty, deterioration of housing and services urban, low occupancy levels, lack of professional opportunities and criminality. In his study on segregation and crime in urban America, Massey (1995) concludes that the coincidence of high levels of poverty among blacks and high spatial segregation rates create ecological niches in that there are high rates of crime, violence and risk of being a victim of such crimes… Unless there is a movement towards desegregation, the cycle of violence will continue; however, the perpetuation of violence paradoxically it makes desegregation more difficult because it makes it beneficial for whites to have isolation from blacks. Specifically, by isolating blacks in segregated neighborhoods, the rest of society is isolated in relation to the crime and others social problems resulting from the high poverty rate among blacks. So in the 90s have declined, in general terms, crime rates in the North American main cities. Between 1980 and 1992, the proportion of number of American households that have suffered some form of crime has reduced by more than a third, but at the same time, the probability for Blacks of being victims of a crime have increased extraordinarily. Black teenagers are nine times more likely than boy’s targets of being killed: in 1960 they died violently 45 / 100,000, while that in 1990 the rate had gone to 140 / 100,000. In his study on the relationship between segregation of blacks and homicide of blacks in 125 cities, Peterson and Kirov found that spatial segregation between whites and blacks was the statistically most explanatory factor of the homicide rate of all the variables analyzed, much more important than poverty, education or age (10). Whoever is nearby is killed, and when a society, breaking with its liberal traditions and with its laws of racial integration, adopts the attitude cynical of locking up their impoverished racial minorities in more and more deteriorated ghettos, it exacerbates the violence in these areas. But from that moment the ethnic majority is doomed to live entrenched under the protection of the police and must allocate a large budget to police and prisons instead of education, as is the case in the state of California.

Racism and segregation:
While racism and urban segregation exist in all societies, not always are their profiles as marked nor their consequences as violent as those that occur in American cities. Likewise, Brazil is a multiracial society, in which blacks and mulattos occupy the lowest levels of the social scale (11). But, although ethnic minorities are also spatially segregated, both between the regions of the country and within the areas metropolitan, the dissimilarity index, which measures urban segregation, is far inferior to that of the North American metropolitan areas. Thus though economic inequality is influenced by ethnicity, institutional and social barriers and prejudices are much less entrenched than in U.S. Thus, two societies with an equally slave-like past evolved towards different patterns of spatial segregation and racial discrimination, based on cultural, institutional and economic factors that they favored the mixing of races and social integration in Brazil and made it difficult in the United States: a comparison that invites analysis of historical variation of a human nature that is not immutable.

Now, what seems to be established is the tendency to segregate ethnic minorities in all cities and in particular in the cities of the world more developed. Thus, as European societies receive new groups of immigrants and see their ethnic minorities grow from groups established in the last three decades, the segregation pattern is accentuated urban ethnicity. In the United Kingdom, although London only accounts for 4.7% of the population, it’d concentrated with 42% of the ethnic minorities population. These minorities, particularly concentrated in some districts, are characterized by a lower level of education, higher unemployment rate and an economic activity rate of only 58% compared to 80% of whites (12). At London’s Wands worth district, with about 260,000 inhabitants, about 150 different languages are spoken. To that ethnic-cultural diversity is joined by the doubtful privilege of being one of the English districts with the highest rate of social deficiencies. In Goteborg (Sweden), 16% of the population is of foreign origin and its residence is concentrated in the northeast of the city and on the island of Hisingen Zurich, which has seen its population of foreigners increase (especially Turks and Yugoslavs) from 18% in 1980 to 25% in 1990, 44% of this population is concentrated in the industrial areas of the urban periphery. In Holland, the foreigners are only 5% of the total population, but in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht said proportion ranges between 15% and 20%, while in the old neighborhoods of these cities it goes up to 50%. In Belgium the proportion of foreigners is 9%, but in the city of Anderlecht reaches 26% and in the neighborhood of La Rose, the most deteriorated, foreigners they represent 76% of its 2,300 inhabitants (13). In sum, European cities they are following, to a large extent, the urban segregation path of ethnic minorities characteristic of American metropolises, although the spatial form of urban segregation is more diverse in Europe. While the French banliues configure peripheral metropolitan ghettos, Central European and British people tend to concentrate minorities in the city center, in a space model similar to the North American, which can contribute to the decline of urban centers if the living conditions of ethnic minorities in Europe. Moreover, the importance of gangs and the flourishing of criminal activities is less accentuated in Europe than in North America. But if the tendencies of social exclusion continue to worsen, it seems reasonable to assume that situations similar will lead to similar consequences, except for the cultural and institutional differences. The multicultural city is a city enriched by its diversity, as Daniel Cohn Bandit pointed out in his introductory intervention to the Frankfurt Colloquium sponsored by the Council of Europe on multiculturalism in the city (14). But, as it also remained manifest in this colloquium, the segregated city is the city of rupture of social solidarity and, eventually, of the empire of urban violence.

Floating populations in cities:
The variable geometry of the new world economy and the intensification of migratory phenomenon, both rural-urban and international, have generated a new category of population, between rural, urban and metropolitan: population floating that moves with economic flows and according to the permissiveness of institutions, in search of their survival, with temporalities and spatial variables, depending on the countries and circumstances.

Although by its very nature the phenomenon is difficult to measure, more and more current extensive research provides data on its importance and on the consequences it has for the operation and management of cities (15). Perhaps the society in which the floating population reaches largest dimensions is China during the last decade. For a long time, the control of population movements regulated in 1958 in which each citizen Chinese was registered as a member of a hook (household) and classified on the base of said residence. Under said regulation a change of rural residence to urban was extremely difficult. The trips required prior permission and the rationing system forced one to present in stores or restaurants coupons assigned to the place of residence and work. Thus, the hook system was effective method of controlling space mobility and reducing rural-urban migration (16). However, with China’s economic liberalization during the eighties immobility became dysfunctional for the allocation of resources humans according to a dynamic partially governed by market laws. Furthermore, the privatization and modernization of agriculture increased productivity and then expelled tens of millions of peasants from the land who turned out to be surplus labor (17). Unable to meet the needs of this economically displaced rural population, the Chinese government chose to raise restrictions on population movements and / or apply them less strictly, according to the regions and the moments of the political situation. The result was the generation of massive rural-urban migrations in the last decade, especially towards the big cities and towards the industrial centers and South China exporters. But those cities and regions, despite their extraordinary economic dynamism (in fact, the centers with the highest rate of economic growth of the world in the last decade) could not absorb stable workers by the millions, nor provide them with urban housing and services, so many urban immigrants lived without a fixed residence or in the rural periphery of the metropolis, while many others adapted a pattern of seasonal migrations, coming and going between their villages of origin and metropolitan centers (18). So Guangzhou (Canton), a city of about six million inhabitants, accounted in 1992 a total of 1.34 million temporary residents to which 260,000 were added daily. In the whole of Guangdong province they were estimated at minus 6 million the number of temporary migrants. In Shanghai, at the end of the 80s, they had 1.83 million floating, while in 1993, after development from the industrial district of Pudding, it was estimated that one million more were floating. They had arrived in Shanghai in that year. The only reliable migration survey of the last decade, carried out in 1986, estimated that on that date 3.6% of the population of the 74 cities surveyed were temporary residents. Other National estimate, evaluates the number of floats in 1988, between 50 and 70 millions of people. What seems undoubted is that the phenomenon has increased Beijing Central Railway Station, built for 50,000 daily passengers, go through it currently between 170,000 and 250,000,according to the periods. The Beijing municipal government estimates that each increase of 100,000 daily visitors to the city consume 50,000 kilos of grain, 50,000 kilos of vegetables, 100,000 kilowatts of electricity, 24,000 liters of water and uses 730 public buses. This number of visitors causes 100,000 kilos of garbage and generates 2,300 kilos of sewage waste. The living conditions of this floating population are much lower than those of the permanent population (19) and are, at the same time, easy prey for crime and shelter for criminals, which increases prejudices against them among the population resident. Although smaller than in China, the phenomenon of a floating population is characteristic of most of the developing world and particularly from Asia (20). So in Bangkok, of the emigrants arrived in the city between 1975 and 1985, 25% had already lived in three different cities and 77% of the respondents did not plan to stay in Bangkok for more than a year, while that only 12% of migrants had registered regularly in their Bangkok residence, indicating an existence on horseback between its areas of origin and the different urban labor markets. In Java, the World Bank estimated that in 1984 25% of rural households had at least one member of the family working in an urban center for part of the year, which it was equivalent to 50% of the urban active population. Similar trends have been observed in the Philippines and Malaysia (21). The extent of the phenomenon, and its diffusion in other areas of the world, it makes the distinction between rural more and more inoperative and urban, to the extent that what is truly significant is the plot of relations that are established between the dynamism of the big cities and the population flows that are located at different times at different times and with different intensities, according to the rhythms of articulation between global and local economy.

In the cities of developed countries there is also an increase in floating population of a different type. So, Guido Marinetti, in an interesting study (22) has insisted on the importance of visitor populations that use the city and its services without residing in it. Not only coming from others localities of the metropolitan area, but of other regions and other countries. Tourists, business travelers and urban consumers form on a given day in the main European cities, (but also North American and South American) a considerable proportion of urban users who, however, do not appear in the statistics nor are they accounted for in the tax base and institutional of urban services that, however, they use intensively. There are three main problems caused by floating populations in urban management. In the first place, its existence provokes a pressure on the urban services greater than the city can assume, unless received special assistance from the higher levels of administration, in line with its real population and the effective use made of its infrastructure. In second, the lack of adequate statistical accounting of said population floating, as well as the irregularity of its movements, prevent a planning adequate urban services. Third, a distortion is created between people present in the city, and citizens capable of causing various problems and the city government. This is negative for the floaters, devoid of rights and, sometimes, outlawed, as for residents who they see broken the solidarity of the citizenship by the existence of differences of status legal and community belonging within the real population of the city. Thus the development of floating populations, directly related to the globalization of economic and communication flows, constitutes a new urban reality for which cities still have no answer.

Multiculturalism and urban social crisis:
In May 1991 there was a meeting in Frankfurt, under the auspices of the Council of Europe. Representatives of different European municipal governments converged to deal with the municipal policies for the multicultural integration of Europe. In the statement published at the end of that meeting (23) it was found that the European countries, as a result of decades of immigration and emigration, had twisted, multicultural societies. Also, to the extent that immigrants and the resulting ethnic minorities concentrated on large cities, immigration treatment policies and respect for multiculturalism constituted an essential component of the new municipal policies. They concluded by stating that only a genuinely democratic Europe was able to carry out a policy of multiculturalism that can make stability a factor in the world and can effectively combat economic imbalances between north and south, east and west, which lead to disorderly emigration (p.167). A similar finding can be made in American society and in relation to the world in general. And yet xenophobic reactions in all countries and the increase in racism and religious fanaticism around the world does not seem to augur an easy treatment of the new urban reality. Immigrants and ethnic minorities appear as scapegoats for economic crises and social uncertainties, according to an old, historically established reflex, regularly exploited by irresponsible political demagogues. Even so, the stubborn new reality of interdependent global economy, socio-economic imbalances and there production of ethnic minorities already residing in more developed countries they make multiculturalism and multiethnicity inevitable almost everywhere in the world. Even Japan, one of the most culturally homogeneous societies in the world, is experiencing a rapid increase in its foreign population, while the growth of the Yoba (casual workers without employment or fixed residence) and its temporary spatial location in ghettos urban, like Amagasaki in Osaka. There are those who think, including authors of this book, that multiculturalism and multiculturalism are sources of economic and cultural wealth for urban societies (24). But even who are alarmed by the disappearance of social homogeneity and social tensions that this causes must accept the new reality: our societies, in all latitudes, are and will be multicultural, and cities (and especially large cities) concentrate the highest level of diversity. Learn to live in that situation, know how to manage cultural exchange to starting from the ethnic difference and remedying the inequalities arising from the discrimination are essential dimensions of the new local policy in the conditions arising from the new global interdependence.

(1). Carlos Alonso Saldivar and Manuel Castells (1992) “Spain, End of the century”, Madrid: Editorial Alliance 1992.
(2). G. Papadimitriou and P. Martín (ends) (1991) “The Unsettled Relationship: Labor Migration and Economic Development “, Westport: Greenwood Press.
UNDIESA (United Nations Department for International Economic and Social
Affairs) (1991) “World Urbanization Prospects: Estimates and Projections or urban and rural populations and of urban agglomerations “, New York: United Nations.
John Kasarda and Allan Parnell (eds) (1993) “Third World Cities: Problems, Policies and Prospects “, London: Sage Publications.
(3). Findley, 1993. In Kasarda and Parnell, op. cit.
(4). Duncan Campbell “Foreign investment, labor immobility and the quality of employment “, International Labor Review, 2, 1994.
(5). Sharon Stanton Rusell and others “International Migration and Development in Subsaharan Africa “, World Bank Discussion Papers 101-102, Washington DC: World Bank, 1990.
(6) Peter Stalker (1994) “The work of strangers. A survey of international labormigration “, Geneva: International Labor Office.
(7). Peter Stalker, op. cit.
(8). Ed Blakely and William Goldsmith (1992) “Separate societies”, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
(9). Robert Bullard, Eugene Gribsby and Charles Lee (1994) “Residential apartheid: the American Legacy “, Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies ..
(10) Ruth Peterson and Lauren Kirov (1993) “Racial Segregation and black urban
homicide “, in” Social Forces “, 71. (eleven). Neuma Aguiar “Rio de Janeiro plural: um guide for social policies by genro e raça “, Rio de Janeiro: IUPERJ, 1994.
(12). Trevor Jones (1993) “Britain’s Ethnic Minorities”, London: Policy Studies
Institute
(13). Council of Europe (1993) “Europe 1990-2000: Multiculturalism in the city, the integration of immigrants “Strasbourg, Studies and Texts, n 25, Council of
Europe, 1993.
(14.) Council of Europe, op. cit.
(15.) Sidney Goldstein (1993), in Kasarda and Parnell, op. cit. Linda Wong (1994) “China’s urban migranst-the public policy challenge”, in”Pacific Affairs”, v. 67. n3, autumn.
(16). Cute Wong, op. cit.
(17). Richard Kirkby (1985) “Urbanization in China”, London: Oxford University Press
(18). Lincoln Day and Ma Xia (eds,) “Migration and Urbanization in China”, Armonk, New York: ME Sharpe, 1994.
(19). Sidney Goldstein (1993), in Kasarda and Parnell, op. cit. (twenty). Lincoln Day and Ma Xia, op. cit. (twenty-one). Corner, 1994.
(22). Marinetti, G. “Metropoli. La nuova morfologia sociale della citt”. Il Mulino, Bologna, 1993.
(23) Council of Europe, op. cit.
(24). Aleksandra Alund and Carl-Ulrik Schierup (1991) “Paradoxes of multiculturalism “, Aldershot: Avebury.

Review of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century

One of the suggested texts for my Geopolitics of Innovation class at UPB was Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21^stCentury. I found it to be a very valuable book in simply describing how it is that the world economy has changed over the past 30 years as a result of digital communications hardware and software. These technologies along with a number of changes in legislation that facilitated increased the ability of US companies to invest and develop workforces in foreign have radically altered the way in which globalization has manifested itself. The flatness to which Friedman refers has, of course, nothing to do with the peculiar Flat Earth movement but with the lowering of barriers that previously prevented innovative collaborations occurring across borders. Friedman intersperses his own analysis with that of a number of subject area experts within the business, academic and governmental sphere to support his “brief history”.

The book uses two dates 11/9, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and 9/11, the date of the hijacked plane attacks on America that launched the War on Terror as bookends by which to frame the flattening of the world and, in the final chapter, as examples of potential directions that the new global economy can head. Either there will be increased openness, collaboration, innovation and free trade or there will be a closure of borders, ideas and exchange of goods, services and capital such that the pace of the economy slows and growth shrinks.

Friedman sees this responsibility to adapt to new conditions as being primarily borne by the individual and their family, with the government facilitating to a limited extent the development of new skill sets and abilities. While not blind that a number of people can get left behind in such situations, as a technological determinist and a student of history he states that there is little that can be done other than adapt – personally, culturally, and economically – to the “flattening of the world”.

The ten historic flatteners Friedman cites are as follows:

#1: 11/9/89, When the Walls Came Down and Windows Hit the Tornado
#2: 8/9/95, When Netscape Went Public
#3: Work Flow Software
#4: Open-Sourcing & Self-Organizing Collaborative Communities
#5: Outsourcing & Y2K
#6: Offshoring
#7: Supply-Chaining
#8: Insourcing
#9: In-forming
#10: The Steroids, Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual”

Each of the ten flatteners show how it was that information and communications technologies radically altered the business landscape in ways that goes far beyond railroads and electrification. While embracing technological determinism, Friedman shows through a number of examples that the sort of retail economic reforms needed to exploit these flatteners are insufficient as indicators unless connected to wider changes in social norms. I found the comparative analysis of different countries business environments and cultural norms to be especially informative. Put simply, societies must rapidly adapt to these new environments or they will rapidly see their GDPs start to slow, stop or decline. Because of this the capacity to learn – be it via market vigilance, improvement of customer relations and business processes, etc. – is the most important quality to be able to demonstrate in the workplace.

With the caveat that the book is not intended to be included within the general rubric of business strategy literature, Friedman also shares a number of the insights he’s gained from analyzing the flatting of competition. I won’t include them all, but Friedman’s analysis on the rules seeks to allay fears that all is lost for the average American worker.

“Rule #6: The best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow larger, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists-not to save money by firing more people.”

These rules and their analysis show how globalization – done ideally – leads to a race to the top rather than a race to the bottom. While citing a number of examples within business history that provides the rationales for these new rules to this effect, the book did leave me wanting for a more detailed analysis of the American economy. While increased economic exchanges between the BRIC countries and the US certainly have a number of positives, I think to better make this case as more comprehensive overview of globalizations impact is necessary. While certainly allowing higher-skilled workers and the companies that employ them to do more for their money – there are a number of social and economic ills connected the transition away from an economy with large portions of the work force in manufacturing to those engaged in the service economy that Friedman doesn’t cover.

One of the sections that I found rather interesting given my academic background and that I participated in several anti-globalization demonstrations – such as the FTAA protests in Miami– is a brief engagement with the writings of of Karl Marx. It’s happens via a professor interlocutor that praised his thought as reflective of the realities of capitalism. I cite these passage below at length in order to close the review with a reflection.

I bring this up as Friedman describes class conflict without calling it such and as it relates to the crux of the book’s unspoken argument – “globalization is good for everyone”. While certainly not as naïve as the political pronouncements made by Fukuyama in his book The End of History and the Last Man, there is a growing body of critical voices from the right on shareholder value being the goal of businesses as opposed to stakeholder value. Many contemporary political commentators have mentioned this, with some citing it as one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected. While I think that Friedman’s optimism is for the most part deserved, I also feel that the destabilizing effects of it make the work at certain points hallucinatory in its choices of coverage.

For example, Friedman cites the antiglobalization movement, which emerged in 1999 at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, to highlight this conflict. According to Friedman:

“From its origins, the movement that emerged in Seattle was a primarily Western-driven phenomenon, which was why you saw so few people of color in the crowds. It was driven by five disparate forces.

One was upper-middle-class American liberal guilt at the incredible wealth and power that America had amassed in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dot-com boom. At the peak of the stock market boom, lots of pampered American college kids, wearing their branded clothing, began to get interested in sweatshops as a way of expiating their guilt.

The second force driving it was a rear-guard push by the Old Left-socialists, anarchists, and Trotskyites-in alliance with protectionist trade unions.

The third force was a more amorphous group. It was made up of many people who gave passive support to the antiglobalization movement from many countries, because they saw in it some kind of protest against the speed at which the old world was disappearing and becoming flat.

The fourth force driving the movement, which was particularly strong in Europe and in the Islamic world, was anti-Americanism. The disparity between American economic and political power and everybody else’s had grown so wide after the fall of the Soviet Empire that America began to-or was perceived to-touch people’s lives around the planet, directly or indirectly, more than their own governments did.

Finally, the fifth force in this movement was a coalition of very serious, well-meaning, and constructive groups-from environmentalists to trade activists to NGOs concerned with governance-who became part of the populist antiglobalization movement in the 1990s in the hopes that they could catalyze a global discussion about how we globalize. I had a lot of respect and sympathy for this latter group. But in the end, they got drowned out by the whether-we-globalize crowd, which began to turn the movement more violent…”

While this aligns with my own readings and experience – a growing body of literature connects the business practices described in the book to the opioid epidemic, increased rates of depression, alcoholism and other nasty ills. Management of the economy and the workplace according to the new rules of globalization have certainly allowed corporations to extract more value and thereby be in a better position to compete globally, but with so many struggling to adapt and with the new social intelligence capacities created by information and communication technologies that there is a growing distrust and animosity to existent leadership such that populism is increasing – I think it’s worth examining not just “how we got here” but also “how can we make this work in a way that’s managed even better.”

Interview Data from “Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street”

Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street by Mark Bray is a first person account of the author’s experiences at the Zuccotti Park iteration Occupy Wall Street. In addition to description of events that he himself witnessed, he also includes selections from interviews he did with many of the people there.

Below is the List of OWS Organizers Interviewed

Aaron Black
Aaron Bornstein
Alexander Penley
Alexandre Carvalho
Amelia
Amelia Dunbar
Amin Husain
Amy
Andrew
Anthony!
Anthony Robledo
Ari Cowan
Ashley
Atiq Zabinski
Audrea Lim
Austin Guest
Axle
Bear Wisdom
Becky
Beka Economopoulos
Ben Reynoso
Beth Bogart
Betsy Catlin
Bill Dobbs
Bill Livsey
Bootz
Bre
Brendan Burke
Brett G.
Brittany Robinson
Camille Raneem
Cara
Cari Machet
Caroline Lewis
Cecily McMillan
Chris
Chris Longenecker
Christhian Diaz
Christine Crowther
Christopher Brown
CJ Holm
Colby Hopkins
Cory Thompson
Dana Balicki
Dave Haack
David Graeber
David Korn
Debra Thimmesch
Dennis Flores
Diego Ibañez
Doug Ferrari
Drew Hornbein
Dylan
Ed Mortimer
Edward Needham
Elizabeth Arce
Eric
Eric Carter
Ethan
Evan Wagner
Fanshen
Felix Riveria-Pitre
George Machado
Georgia
Goldi
Greg Horwitch
Guy Steward
Harrison ‘Tesoura’ Schultz,
Henry Harris (“Hambone”),
Ingrid Burrington
Isham Christie
Jack Boyle
Jackie Disalvo
Jake DeGroot
Jason Ahmadi
Jay
Jeff Smith
Jen Waller
Jerry Goralnick
Jez
Jillian Buckley
Jo Robin
Jonathan G.
Jonathan Smucker
José Martín (“Chepe”)
José Whelan
Josh Ehrenberg
Josh Lucy
Julien Harrison
Julieta Salgado
Justin Stone-Diaz
Justin Strekal
Justin Wedes
Justine Tunney
Kanene
Karanja Wa Gaçuça
Katie Davidson
Kira Annika
Kobi
Laura Durkay
Laura Gottesdiener
Lauren Digioia
Leina Bocar
Liesbeth Rapp
Linnea M. Palmer Paton
Lisa Fithian
Lorenzo Serna
Louis Jargow
Luke Richardson
Madeline Nelson
Malcolm Nokizaru
Malory Butler
Manissa Maharawal
Maria Porto “Sarge”
Mariano Muñoz-Elias
Marina Sitrin
Marisa Holmes
Mark Adams
Matt Presto
Max Berger
Megan Hayes
Michael Fix
Michael Levitin
Michael Premo
Mike Andrews
Moira Meltzer-Cohen
Moses
Nastaran Mohit
Negesti
Nelini Stamp
Nicholas “OWS Tea”
Nick Mirzoeff
Nicole Carty
Nina Mehta
Olivia
Pablo Benson
Pam Brown
Patricia González-Ramirez
Patrick Bruner
Pete Dutro
Priscilla Grim
Rami Shamir
Ravi Ahmad
Ray
Rebecca Manski
Richard Machado
Ronny Nuñez
Rose Bookbinder
Rowland Miller
S.
Sam Corbin
Sam Wood (“Captain”)
Sandra Nurse
Sara Zainab Bokhari
Sean McAlpin
Senia Barragan
Sergio Jimenez
Shane Gill
Shawn Carrié
Sofía Gallisa
Sonny Singh
Sparro Kennedy
Sparrow Ingersoll
Stacey Hessler
Stan
Stefan Fink
Stina Soderling
Sully Ross
Sumumba Sobukwe
Suzahn Ebrahimian
Tashy Endres
Terry
Tess Cohen
Thorin Caristo
Tim Fitzgerald
Timothy Eastman
Tom Hintze
Vanessa Zettler
Victoria Sobel
Will Gusakov
William Haywood Carey
William Jesse
William Scott
Winnie Wong
Winter
Yates McKee
Yoni Miller
Yotam Marom
Zak
Zak Soloman
Zoltán Glück
Zu Solanas