The Quest for Collective Intelligence, in" Community Building: Renewing Spirit and Learning in Business (original) (raw)

What makes an Organization Intelligent?

Purpose: The literature was searched for the benefits of using business intelligence (BI). The benefits of BI categorized as: organizational benefits, business supplier/partners relation benefits, internal processes efficiency benefits, and customer intelligence benefits (Elbashir et al, 2008). On the other hand a review of literature also shows that organizations often fail to realize the benefits of BI (Hawking, 2011). Moss and Atre (2003:5) state that “A staggering 60 percent of BI projects end in abandonment or failure because of inadequate planning, missed tasks, missed deadlines, poor project management, undelivered business requirements, or poor quality deliverables”. The aim of this paper is to find an answer to the question, “what makes an organization intelligent?” a technology (BI software) or an organization itself. Design/Methodology/Approach :The research method of this paper is case study. In Turkey, there are 5 types of hospital. H1 private and multi branch, H2 private unique branch, H3 private, multi branch and foundation supported, H4 public hospital, H5 university hospital (Turkeli and Sahin, 2009). H1 type hospitals are using BI. Only one case analyzed in detail to find an answer to research question. H1 has more than 7.000 staff in over 17 branches in Turkey. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with BI project team who were knowledgeable and had experience with BI, software vendor consultants and BI log reports were analyzed. Findings : The finding of the study was reciprocal effects of BI (technology) and organization. Software is only one of components of organizational efficiency. One of the reasons why BI project fail is the software vendors which try to sell a general BI project and do not analyze each organization. Every organization has unique needs, which means there is not one size fits all business intelligence software. BI projects should be started after analyzing organization structure and culture. After analyzing organization structure and culture, technology should be designed to fit the current needs of organization. After implemention of BI, technology (BI) will affect organization. For example, it will change working style of people. At that time technology will cause organizational change. After organizational change, the necessity of organization will also change so we need to analyze organization at that time and technology should be designed to fit the organization’s changed structure and culture. BI and organizations reciprocally change each other, this continues process makes an organization intelligent. Research Limitations : The research method of this paper is case study, for this reason it relies on only one hospital’s BI project implementation. Generalizations about populations or universes cannot be made on the basis of case studies but case studies can be used to generalize about theoretical propositions (Yin, 1994). This case study gives clues about BI project. Practical/ Managerial Implications : BI vendor revenue expected $7.7 billion by the year 2012 (Sommer, 2008). As in the rest of the world, organizations in the healthcare industry in Turkey try to implement BI project. There has to be greater understanding of business intelligence at every level of healthcare organizations, software vendors and other BI project team members. Originality/Value : Even BI is a very popular topic recently, there is not a work in literature which explains BI and organization reciprocally affects each other. Every organization has unique needs; the success of a BI requires a clear understanding of the business needs. After implementing a BI (technology), BI and organization reciprocally change each other inevitably. Keywords – Business Intelligence, Intelligent Business, Healthcare, Technology, Organization, Reciprocally Change Paper Type – Research paper

Collective intelligence: the invisible revolution

Collective Intelligence: the Invisible Revolution, 2007

The main stakes for humanity are not hunger, poverty, sustainability, peace, healthcare, education, economy, natural resources or a host of other issues but our capability to build new social organizations that no longer create such outcomes. Our main stake is Collective Intelligence. Today large organizations encounter insurmountable difficulties when dealing with the complexity and the unexpectedness of the world when operating against a global backdrop. They undergo conflicts of interest in many areas – between profitability and sustainability, secrecy and transparency, values and value, individual and collective dynamics, and knowledge fertilizing – that opens – and competition – that closes. What most medium and large organizations have in common is an infrastructure based on pyramidal hard-coded social maps, command and control, labor division, and a monetary system stimulated by scarcity. Until recently, this social architecture was the only information system at our disposal to pilot and organize complex human edifices. We call it pyramidal collective intelligence. It remains efficient as long as the environment remains stable, but it becomes vulnerable and inefficient in fluctuating contexts, namely when markets, knowledge, culture, technology, external interactions, economy or politics keep changing faster than the capability of the group to respond. Evolution has provided humankind with specific social skills based on collaboration and mutual support. These skills reach their maximum effectiveness within small groups of 10 to 20 people, but no more, where the individual and collective benefit is higher than what would have been obtained if everyone remained alone. We call it original collective intelligence. As individuals, we all know what it is because it is very likely that we have experienced it at some degree in our lives. Well-trained, small teams have interesting dynamic properties. These include transparency, a gift economy, a collective awareness, a polymorphic social structure, a high learning capacity, a convergence of interest between the individual and collective levels, interactions characterized by human warmth, and, above all, an excellent capability to handle complexity and the unexpected. Is it possible for large organizations to benefit from the same properties? Can they become as reactive, flexible, transparent, responsive, and innovative as small teams? Can they evolve even further, toward a global Collective Intelligence? Can they conjugate their interests with overriding concerns of humanity such as ethics, sustainability, etc…? The answer today is a resounding yes. It is not only possible, but absolutely necessary for not just the efficiency of these organizations but above all for the well-being of human society. The aim of this paper is to provide the key concepts underlying collective intelligence and to explore how modern organizations and individuals can concretely learn how to increase their collective intelligence, i.e. their capability to collectively invent the future and reach it in complex contexts. This will draw the guidelines of a universal governance, provide an outline of the next governance paradigms and help us forecast an economy in which competition and collaboration as well as values and value are reconciled.

Organisational Intelligence

Purpose – Seeks to explore the notion of organisational intelligence as a simple extension of the notion of the idea of collective intelligence. Design/methodology/approach – Discusses organisational intelligence using previous research, which includes the Purpose, Properties and Practice model of Dealtry, and the Viable Systems model. Findings – The notion of organisational intelligence requires a metaphorically defined psychological frame of reference. In trying to formulate this metaphor, there has been a need to explore the collective from a psychological perspective. Applications of the notion of organisational intelligence operate in a variety of areas, and two of these are in organisational learning and managerial cybernetics. In the latter an interest lies in dealing with organisational pathologies, resulting in viable systems. Originality/value – Addresses the need for developing organisational intelligence.

The Role of Collective Intelligence in Modern Organisation

economyinformatics.ase.ro

This paper focuses on a comparison between collective intelligence and intelligent organization. Today, the modern organisations have intelligent systems covering the technical necessities. With the help of these intelligent systems can be tracked various areas of the organisation: sourcing, production, quality, stocks, and human resources, level of salaries.

Collective intelligence and capacity building

The Information Society has new and specific characteristics. Information is digitalised, and therefore interactive, processable, transportable, accessible in new ways. Information is changing more quickly than before, and we see new types of information appear. The Information Society is a networked society, a society where collective capabilities are more and more needed, in addition to individual ones. Capacity building in the Information Society is not just an extension of the usual capacity building. New competences, new capabilities are necessary. These are not only technological competences, but more profound competences linked with new concepts. Not only competences linked to new knowledge, but competences linked to new ways to access knowledge. In particular three aspects of capacity building in the Information Society will be analysed: Accessing and processing knowledge in a networked world; Collective intelligence and collective capacity, and New citizenship in the Information Society. New capabilities cannot be acquired through the old ways of education: capacity building needs new contents and methods.

Fostering Collective Capability

The greatest resource for improving interprofessional learning and practice is the knowledge, wisdom, and energy of professionals who adapt to challenging situations in their everyday work. We call collective capability the ability of a group of professionals to balance two interdependent levels of organization of practice: what professionals know and what they do collectively over time. Organizing what professionals know links the relational value – caring for patients – to the knowledge value of practice. Organizing what professionals do includes human and organizational factors that facilitate collective work and learning: technical skills for care delivery, institutional support, and a complex mix of emotional, ethical and moral factors involved in social decision-making. Performance gaps can result from a lack of an integrated knowledge framework or from a disembodied knowledge that is not anchored in practice. Opportunities for continuous learning can be seized by documenting the source of the performance gap, and providing the relevant resources to establish the balance between the organization of knowledge and the organization of work.