Corporate Brain
Corporate Brain metaphors (for example corporate memory) have been used in the literature since the 1930's [1] referring to written meeting minutes. The corporate brain analogy has been used for a variety of disparate aspects of complex social organizational behaviour since the 1950's [2][3]. These include the mental, spiritual and emotional aspects of organizational structures, ethics[4] thinking, decision making and leadership.[5][6][7] and the process of organizational learning (including the phrase corporate memory [8] and corporate amnesia) and intellectual capital management.[9][10] The metaphor has also been used to refer to human capital[11], staff retention [12][13] , corporate information security [14] and associative networks in a pure technological (computer software) sense.[15][16][17]
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) state analogies "Help people make sense of technological change and other innovations. Using them effectively relies on recognizing both their pitfalls and benefits". [18] Their research from 1945-1975 charted the use of two analogues for the computer, one as a machine and one as a brain. In the initial assimilation phase, the analogy of the brain was less obvious and more difficult to grasp for the organization, perceiving the computer first as a machine, appeared more productive. In the later phases of analysis and adaptation, organizations thought it less of a machine and more as a brain.This enabled them to grasp the computer’s significance and more clearly comprehend its broad potential.
Recent examples of the corporate brain analogy have taken a systems thinking viewpoint [19] in an attempt to convey the significance and potential offered by recent trends such as increases in connectivity [20] and information volumes [21] (some practitioners term big data). It has been suggested these trends facilitate the convergence of traditional disciplines such as Data and Information Management (Structured and Unstructured), Business Intelligence, Enterprise Search & Discovery, Information Retrieval (IR), Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), Predictive Analytics, Knowledge Management, Application Workflow, weak Artificial Intelligence (AI) (some practitioners refer to as cognitive computing) and Organizational Behaviour (OB).This holistic structure has been proposed as behaving like a corporate brain[22].
The frequent and enduring use of corporate brain metaphors in the academic and practitioner literature may be due to its effectiveness in communicating the significance of technological changes and several established academic theories with respect to their application to the corporate environment. For example, the application of Complexity Theory to organizations as a metaphor[23][24][25][26], where the brain (a complex adaptive system) has been suggested as a metaphoric lens to view aspects of the organization, where lack of effective feedback led to poor levels of 'organizational self awareness'. A specific example is exploratory information search tasks, research shows there is no association between organizational and user satisfaction levels or self assessed competence and how well exploratory search tasks are actually performed in the organization [27][28]. This type of 'awareness' has been termed organizational metacognition[29].
The corporate brain metaphor is not a management theory and does not have a single agreed definition for use. The corporate brain metaphors and analogues have been criticised as a hodge-podge which is neither notable as a concept or a management theory in itself. Although the cognitive theory of metaphor in business is well established [30], the use of analogies and metaphors in business is not without criticism in terms of their effectiveness. [31]
References[edit]
- ↑ Lapsley, Gaillard (1936-01-01). "Some Recent Advance In English Constitutional History (Before 1485)". Cambridge Historical Journal. 5 (02): 119–161. doi:10.1017/S147469130000130X. ISSN 1474-6913.
- ↑ Mueller, John H. (1958). "Perspective on the organization man". Business Horizons. 1 (2): 83–91. doi:10.1016/0007-6813(58)90042-9.
- ↑ "Corporate amnesia: Widespread destruction of records by modern air bombing could mean the end of civilization's colletive memory - ProQuest". search.proquest.com. Retrieved 2015-12-10.
- ↑ Singer, Alan E. (2007-08-23). Integrating Ethics with Strategy: Selected Papers of Alan E. Singer. World Scientific. ISBN 9789812779175. Search this book on
- ↑ Hymer, Stephen (1970-05-01). "The Efficiency (Contradictions) of Multinational Corporations". The American Economic Review. 60 (2): 441–448.
- ↑ Zohar, Danah (1997-01-01). Rewiring the Corporate Brain (1st ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ISBN 9781576750223. Search this book on
- ↑ McKELVEY, Bill (2001-06-01). "Energising order-creating networks of distributed intelligence: improving the corporate brain". International Journal of Innovation Management. 05 (02): 181–212. doi:10.1142/S1363919601000348. ISSN 1363-9196.
- ↑ Brooking, Annie (1999-01-01). Corporate Memory: Strategies for Knowledge Management. Cengage Learning EMEA. ISBN 1861522681. Search this book on
- ↑ "A critical review of knowledge management as a management tool". Journal of Knowledge Management. 4 (3): 204–216. 2000. doi:10.1108/13673270010350002. ISSN 1367-3270.
- ↑ "What's Best for the Corporate Brain?". HBS Working Knowledge. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ "Human Capital Review - The Cure to Corporate Brain Disorder". www.humancapitalreview.org. Retrieved 2015-12-10.
- ↑ "How big companies can stop the brain drain". Fortune. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ "Here Comes Corporate Brain Drain - InformationWeek". InformationWeek. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ "Could WikiLeaks Expose Your Corporate Brain?". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ Berthold, M.R., Nurnberger, A. "Corporate Brain: Sparking new Ideas Through External Associations". citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. Retrieved 2015-12-09.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
- ↑ "Google Brain".
- ↑ "Wizeline, with a fresh $6.7M, wants to create a 'corporate brain' to boost product dev". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ "How to Use Analogies to Introduce New Ideas". MIT Sloan Management Review. Retrieved 2015-12-10.
- ↑ Cleverley, Paul (2015-12-05). "Emergence of the corporate brain". Robert Gordon University.
- ↑ "CES 2015: New Connectivity Technology Trends Take the Spotlight". HPE Matter. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ "Big Data – for better or worse". SINTEF. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ "Enterprise Search & Discovery: Systems Thinking". Enterprise Search & Discovery: Systems Thinking. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
- ↑ McBride, Neil (2005-07-01). "Chaos theory as a model for interpreting information systems in organizations". Information Systems Journal. 15 (3): 233–254. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2575.2005.00192.x. ISSN 1365-2575.
- ↑ "Integrating complexity theory, knowledge management and organizational learningnull". Journal of Knowledge Management. 4 (3): 195–203. 2000-09-01. doi:10.1108/13673270010377652. ISSN 1367-3270.
- ↑ Byrne, David (1998-01-10). Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: An Introduction. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415162968. Search this book on
- ↑ Morgan, Gareth (2006-05-09). Images of Organization (4th Revised edition edition ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, Inc. ISBN 9781412939799.CS1 maint: Extra text (link) Search this book on
- ↑ Griffiths, Jillian R.; Johnson, Frances; Hartley, Richard J. (2007-09-01). "User satisfaction as a measure of system performance". Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. 39 (3): 142–152. doi:10.1177/0961000607080417. ISSN 0961-0006.
- ↑ Cleverley, Paul H.; Burnett, Simon; Muir, Laura (2015-10-01). "Exploratory information searching in the enterprise: A study of user satisfaction and task performance". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology: n/a-n/a. doi:10.1002/asi.23595. ISSN 2330-1643.
- ↑ Looney, J.P.; Nissen, Mark E. (2007-01-01). "Organizational Metacognition: The Importance of Knowing the Knowledge Network". 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2007. HICSS 2007: 190c–190c. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2007.419.
- ↑ Maestre, María D. López (2000-06-01). "THE BUSINESS OF COGNITIVE STYLISTICS: A SURVEY OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN BUSINESS ENGLISH". Atlantis. 22 (1): 47–69.
- ↑ "Stop Using Battle Metaphors in Your Company Strategy". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 2015-12-10.
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