17 Nov 2011
(In)frequently asked questions -(I)FAQ.....
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1. What is this (I)FAQ about?
This (I)FAQ deals with the role of NCSI in promoting interdisciplinary
research in IISc.
2. But are there not initiatives already in place to meet this objective?
Interdisciplinary centres have been set up, there are occasional
lectures by faculty of other departments and, in the case of
interdisciplinary research teams, movement of students from one
department to another?
Simply establishing interdisciplinary teams and centres is not
enough: they must also function effectively.They need coaching
and methodological support to reach their full potential. There
is an urgent need for the Institute to have an internal capability
to build and sustain interdisciplinary communities. This becomes
important considering that IISc is plagued by many institutional
problems that act as barriers to knowledge integration.
3. What are those institutional problems? Can you elaborate?
I did explain this in my earlier FAQ. The undue focus on
publications, individualism and secrecy may have served knowledge
fragmentation but they cannot meet our objective of knowledge
integration. That said, even if rules and incentives are modified
to suit interdisciplinary communities, they would still need dedicated
support to function well.
4. Are you implying that interdisciplinary teams and centres have their
downside as well?
Yes, like any other human institution, they have their disorders.
They may simply not be functioning well or they can even become
an obstacle to learning. This may happen when the qualities one seeks
in a successful interdisciplinary community are pushed out of balance.
5. Can you give an example of such an imbalance?
Most certainly. Successful communities capture and document insights,
ideas and procedures. They organize that information into a
repository so it is easily accessible to members. But carried to the
extreme, this turns into a single-minded focus on documentation. The
result of documentism is typically an information junkyard. It is a
consequence of thinking that the documents are the main source of value
to the community. To remedy it, communities need to think through
their purpose, identify the documents that would genuinely be useful,
and develop clear roles for managing them. Even though documentation
is important for a community, most find that they need to integrate
documentation with knowledge sharing and problem solving activities.
There is need for support teams that help accelerate the natural
learning and evolution processes of interdisciplinary communities.
6. What other ways can support teams help?
The teams can operate on both the strategic and tactical levels.
This may include assessing the current condition, identifying strategic
capability gaps and areas where learning activities are uncoordinated
as also educating, raising awareness and convincing stakeholders.
On another level, there will be need to build a repository for
community documents including best practices and standards, a directory
of members' areas of expertise and a shared workspace for synchronous
electronic collaboration.
Let me add that this is only an illustrative list. There are many
more issues involved in developing interdisciplinary communities.
7. I notice you talk of interdisciplinary 'communities': has this
got any special connotation than, say, interdisciplinary teams
or centers?
The essence of a 'team' is a set of interdependent tasks that
contribute to a predefined, shared objective. The team makes a
commitment to this goal and ensures that individual commitments
are kept. The essence of a 'community' is the members' personal
investment in its domain. It is not so much a specific achievement
as a territory, an area of shared interest that the community
explores. A community is not defined by any set of 'tasks': it
is defined by its fundamental commitment to exploring its domain
and to developing and sharing the relevant knowledge.
8. But does not a 'department' also reflect 'an area of
shared interest'?
It is true that universities in general have organized themselves
around the scientific specialties, the 'disciplines', but this was
spurred not so much for the purpose of stewarding knowledge and
fostering learning as by the need to meet the increased competition for
university resources. Look around and see how much communication
takes place between the different specialty groups even within the same
department: I guess it might be very minimal. So yes, the
conventional university structure does not address present day
knowledge related problems: there is need for more informal,
voluntary structures organized around knowledge.
9. And interdisciplinary communities can provide this structure, right?
At this point, let me add a qualifier and rephrase interdisciplinary
communities as interdisciplinary 'communities of practice' to make
it more broad-based. Whereas a 'domain' denotes the topic the community
focuses on, the 'practice' is the specific knowledge the
community develops, shares and maintains. A community of practice
generally consists of a domain, the community and the practice. But
members of a community may also face similar problems that are not
officially recognized as domains such as aggressive clients or a low
status job.(You may, however, continue to refer to interdisciplinary
communities of practice as interdisciplinary communities for the
purpose of this I-FAQ).
The answer to your question is yes: interdisciplinary communities of
practice can even become the foundational structures on which to
build the twenty-first century research university.
10.But have not communities of practice always been functioning in
research universities? Have not communities been always organized
around the disciplines-physics, chemistry, biology..for the practices
of research and teaching?
Not quite. Remember that the 'practices' that you mentioned were
taken for granted; what gained more prominence were the disciplines
and the organization of knowledge around them. Moreover, there have
never been true 'communities' in operation. As I have said earlier,
universities have been organized around the 'disciplines' not so
much for the purpose of fostering learning and knowledge as much as
for meeting the increased competition for resources. The 'disciplinary'
approach to knowledge production is in fact self-constraining.
'Learning' has to encompass much more than classroom teaching and the
kind of apprenticeship that research students go through. The new
scheme will put 'practice' before 'knowledge': seeing the research
university not through the lens of knowledge, but through the lens of
practice.
11.So you are making a distinction between knowledge and practice?
Yes. Let me clarify. The 'practice' of managing a cricket team
is not the same as the 'practice' of playing on a team. A researcher
may think he has invented a brilliant new technology: a manufacturing
professional may simply dismiss it. That's because both belong to
different communities of practice. If people are engaged in different
practices, if they are learning to be different kinds of people, they
will respond to the same information in different ways: the same
'knowledge' doesn't get produced. Practice shapes assimilation.
12. How do you say that?
When you share a practice, or when you have evolved a practice
together and have learned to read each other and know what
everyone else is really good at, there is a kind of trust and common
ground that is built up which enables smooth flow of knowledge
(within a community of practice). Practice provides the rails on which
knowledge flows. As I have already indicated, it is the different
attitudes and dispositions shaped by practice and identity
that divide different communities of practice.
Take the case of NCSI. We belong to a community of practice that is
very different from other units in IISc. We provide services: others
are basically into research and teaching. We have our own style, our
own sense of taste, judgment and appropriateness.I feel that might be
one of the primary reasons why members of the teaching and research
community (even from the same domain, leave alone different domains)
are not always able to judge, in a fair manner, the degree of effort
and quality of work put in by the service community.
13.But why do you suggest such an explicit focus on 'practice' now?
As I have stated in an earlier FAQ, there are several unhealthy
trends afflicting research universities. There is a need to bring
in elements that counterbalance the unavoidable and that negate
the negative traits. And one way of doing this is to focus on
converting research universities into 'learning organizations'.
Researchers are becoming more directly sensitive to market pressures.
Certain lines of inquiry that are unlikely to be rewarded by large
grants are not likely to be pursued. Most innovations have always come
from outside the research university. But the university was needed
to ensure that the innovations were converted into public goods
rather than intellectual property. As universities themselves are
now encouraged to become intellectual property holders, their
distinctiveness as producers of knowledge as a public good is itself
under threat. There is need for measures to counterbalance the negative
effects to bring the spotlight back to knowledge as a public good free
from extraneous considerations. Seeing the research university through
the lens of 'practice' can be a useful tool in facilitating their
development as learning organizations.
14.OK.. but what's the connection between 'practice' and a 'learning
organization'?
Communities of practice help in knowledge flow. Exchange of knowledge
across community boundaries will help integrate the knowledge system.
The organization then becomes a learning organization. A learning
organization is able to cope with change in a much better manner. There
will be all-round improvement in quality.
Let me again come back to your earlier query on why the explicit focus
on 'practice' now. As I have indicated, a series of events in the
external environment is forcing centres of higher education to adapt
through new initiatives. New initiatives such as industry-academia
interaction also lead to unhealthy trends such as dependence on big
industrial money and the patenting culture. A series of countermeasures
(such as identifying with the general public by rendering esoteric
knowledge publicly available) are needed to offset the negative
effects. A two-way learning with external stakeholders such as research
users and citizen scientists has now become feasible. With new
technologies and systems in place, administrators will be able to rely
on quality information and knowledge for decision making. New
'practices' such as the practice of interacting with research users or
the practice of converting information to knowledge or the practice of
disseminating scientific knowledge to the lay public have gained
importance. Interdisciplinarity has resulted in multiple
stakeholders: this has resulted in the 'practice' of negotiating with
them to reach common ground. The success of a research university is no
longer dependent on just the 'practices' of research and teaching:
there are multiple interlinked practices. Communities can be formed
around each of these practices.
15.In an earlier (I)FAQ you had stated that interdisciplinary
centres cannot be run like other departments. Can you elaborate?
Sure. I agree that lean 'centres' were conceived of as a way to
stimulate networks of innovators in units attached to diverse
institutions and firms in the context of the new socially distributed
knowledge production. But if these units are to be simply disbanded
when their jobs are completed or when decreasing returns become
evident, sustainable long-term benefits would not accrue. Without
adequate process management, they run the risk of functioning as
another department. A 'department' implies specifying a structure and
systems and roles that achieve relatively fixed goals and fit well with
other structural elements. This may have worked for fragmentary not
integrative research, since interdisciplinary research mostly implies
integrative research.
16.But how else can specific interdisciplinary projects be managed?
If you are talking of managing specific interdisciplinary
projects, of interdisciplinary teams focused on specific tasks- yes,
the 'centres' may well be suitable. But what I am concerned more with
is promoting learning and knowledge and I don't think interdisciplinary
centres are the best structures to achieve this objective.
But let me also put a counter-question: How many interdisciplinary
'centres' will you keep creating? A 'centre' once again implies a
boundary; true interdisciplinarity transcends boundaries. Let's say we
have 2 interdisciplinary centres- ID1 and ID2. Who will manage a
project involving both ID1 and ID2? Do you create a third
interdisciplinary centre? Sure, there may be many external stakeholders
in these centres and are probably not as institutionalized as a
department is but I guess the difference ends there. A 'centre' apes a
'department' in all other ways: it facilitates resource utilization,
has boundaries, has to have a budget and administrators.
In the absence of structures that promote learning and knowledge,
interdisciplinary centres may very well fade away. No problem with
that- they are temporary structures designed to fade away. Centres
are constantly being reorganized. Projects come and go. Teams are
assembled and dispersed.But along with them the knowledge accumulated
also gets lost. I am referring here primarily to the kinds of knowledge
that get created in the course of carrying out the projects but never
get formally published. Given this flux, the moot question is whether
the temporary structures can be reinforced by ones that are more stable
and long-term albeit informal and voluntary. Interdisciplinary
communities that facilitate promoting learning and knowledge provide
that stability. And that's why, as I have said earlier, communities
of practice can become the foundational structures on which to build
the twenty-first century research university.
17.And that would provide new degrees of freedom for redesigning the
research university?
Precisely. We may then even be able to re-examine the whole concept
of initiating several interdisciplinary centres and instead
have just a single unit that would take on the responsibility of
managing nay administering the different interdisciplinary projects.
This can co-exist along with the several interdisciplinary
communities.
18.So setting up interdisciplinary communities is also needed for
integrative research, right?
Well..'setting' up may not be the right word. We should realize
that communities should be natural, spontaneous and self-directed.
You cannot contrive or dictate it. Communities evolve toward their
potential rather than define them upfront and developing them
involves imagining possibilities their members have not yet
considered. And yet, as I have already indicated, if these
communities are to survive on a sustained basis and reach their full
potential they need support. The support services may include
'designing' them, but with characteristics very different from the
'design' as we have traditionally understood.
19.How is it different from the traditional design?
The goal of interdisciplinary community design is to bring out the
community's own internal direction, character and energy. Designing
them is more a matter of shepherding their evolution than creating
them from scratch. Communities usually build on pre-existing networks.
The key is to combine design elements in a way that catalyzes
interdisciplinary community development.
20.Won't all the interdisciplinary communities need separate dedicated
support teams?
Ideally yes. All interdisciplinary communities should not be handled
the same way. They may be 'distributed' in varying degrees:
geographically and in other ways with respect to size, organizational
affiliation, cultural and other differences. They may even have
different strategic intents.
21.Can you elaborate?
Strategic intents for forming communities may differ. One may be
to help each other solve everyday work problems, another may be
to develop and disseminate a set of best practices or to steward
the tools, insights and approaches needed by members and yet another
to develop highly innovative solutions and ideas. Different intents
require different community structures and activities. But this
does not necessarily imply that the support teams have to function in a
disjointed manner.
22.What is the alternative then?
The support teams can function from and be part of a central
Interdisciplinary Research Facilitation Unit (IRFU) that can also
oversee the coordinated working of all these communities.
It can facilitate exchanges across community boundaries and help
integrate the knowledge system. The central unit can take care of
the support needs of individual communities as well.
[The IRFU itself can be part of a larger 'Institute Knowledge
Initiative' similar to the Institute Nanoscience Initiative
(INI) or the Institute Mathematics Initiative(IMI) and housed at
NCSI. A dedicated dashboard can be set up in the monitoring room
of the IRFU at NCSI for facilitating boundary exchange].
23.You talked about facilitating exchanges across community boundaries.
Can you throw more light on this?
Earlier I touched upon the disorders faced by individual communities.
But communities do not exist in isolation. Their effectiveness is
not a matter of their internal development alone but how well they
connect with other communities as well. Problems also afflict
constellations of communities: by constellation I mean a set of
multiple communities related by organization affiliation, subject
matter or application. As communities focus on their domains and
deepen their expertise, they inevitably create boundaries. Different
domains entail different interests, perspectives and perceptions of
value. Membership in different communities makes trust more difficult.
Different practices entail different vocabularies, styles and sets of
experiences.It is important to pay as much attention to
the boundaries of communities as to their core, and to make sure
that there is enough activity at these boundaries to prevent
fragmentation and renew learning.
24.Can interdisciplinary communities of practice meet the challenge of
different interests, perspectives, perceptions of value, vocabularies,
styles and sets of experiences?
What makes managing knowledge a challenge is that it is not an object
that can be stored, owned and moved around like a piece of equipment
or document. It resides in the skills, understanding and relationships
of its members as well as in the tools,documents and processes that
embody aspects of this knowledge. Communities of practice do not reduce
knowledge to an object. They are the ideal social structures for
stewarding knowledge. By assigning responsibility to the practitioners
themselves to generate and share the knowledge they need, these
communities provide a social forum that supports the living nature of
knowledge. So yes, one way of reconciling different interests,
perspectives, perceptions of value, vocabularies, styles and sets of
experiences is through interaction and informal learning processes such
as storytelling, conversation, coaching and apprenticeship of the kind
that communities of practice provide. But I repeat: management
and support services for such communities are crucial. It is not just a
question of grouping people together: there are complex issues involved
and the nuances and subtleties need to be addressed for their
successful operation.
25.Oh well..I see the point. You need to nurture interdisciplinary
communities (and by implication interdisciplinary research) if they
are to sustain and thrive and that requires dedicated professional
care without which they are likely to fizzle out. Am I right?
Fizzling out may be a strong word but it is a possibility. What is
certain is interdisciplinary communities will fail to achieve
their full potential without dedicated care. It is not
enough to have shared projects that are at the intersections of
multiple domains or people with membership in multiple
communities. Learning to see interdisciplinary community disorders
is a useful lens for developing them and helping to ensure their
continuing value. To allow communities to flourish, it is very
important to pay constant attention and fine tune the process as it
evolves. Interdisciplinary communities truly become knowledge
assets when their core and boundaries evolve in complementary ways-
creating deep expertise inside and constant renewal at the boundary. The
learning potential of the institute lies in the balancing act between
well-developed communities and active boundary management.
26.And NCSI can take on that balancing role?
Any unit in IISc can take on that role. But since NCSI has
been most closely involved with scientific information and
knowledge management in the Institute for sometime now and
has trained professionals in these areas, I would pitch for it.
After all, the domain of information science and by
extension knowledge management evolved with the need to view knowledge
in its entirety. The issue is not just one of reconciling different
perspectives, interests or perceptions of value. While the Institute
(and universities in general) is faced with a gamut of organizational
problems, the basic structures and systems remain the same. Quick-fixing
solutions will only have limited impact. A more holistic approach
to change will cause many of the problems to just disappear: we
may not even have to address them individually. The domain of
information and knowledge management has much to offer towards this
end. Relationship and knowledge brokering will gain added
significance. A centre like NCSI will then play a centrestage
role, much beyond being facilitators of not much consequence.
27. Thank you!
-x-
Reference:
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. and Snyder, W.M. 2002. Cultivating Communities of Practice.
Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
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Manu Rajan
National Centre for Science Information (NCSI)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Bangalore 560 012
email: manu.rajan134@gmail.com
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