Management as a Liberal Art Research Institute

The Nature of Knowledge

Karen Linkletter Ph.D.

PUBLISHED:

August 30, 2024

I’ve had several recent conversations with colleagues from academia, business, the arts, and other walks of life about how social media, artificial intelligence (AI), and other technologies seem to be redefining knowledge as we understand it. These interactions have inspired me to start a newsletter series, the first of which will focus on how modern developments force us to reevaluate the definitions of knowledge and knowledge work and the intersections between technology and human beings.


In this first installment, I’d like to briefly explore the history of the philosophical debates about the nature of knowledge and its acquisition. There is an entire area of study devoted to this topic called epistemology. Epistemology concerns itself with the nature, origins, methods, and scope of knowledge. Where do knowledge and opinion diverge? What constitutes knowledge vs. mere data or information? How do we come about acquiring knowledge? 


This will not be a treatise on epistemology! But there is a very long history of philosophical discourse regarding how to define knowledge and how it is most effectively acquired and used. This history is informative as we grapple with current events that force us to deal with the nature of modern information in its digital forms that have the potential for rapid dissemination of misinformation and disinformation. AI has disrupted the way organizations work, altering industries and sectors, while providing efficiency gains and the prospect of greater productivity. Artificial intelligence has also proven its ability to “hallucinate,” or take existing information and contort it into falsehood. In recent years, people with malicious intent have been able to harness the technologies of social media and AI to produce deepfake images that result in false and manipulative advertising campaigns that can destroy reputations or influence potential voters in democratic elections. What we see as “knowledge” today can be redefined and contorted in ways previously never imagined. It therefore is instructive to step back and have a clear understanding of what “knowledge” is, and how it differs from other forms of information. This is an ancient conversation that we can learn from.


The philosophical debates about the nature of knowledge can be traced back to Greek society. Plato and Aristotle differed on their views of what constituted knowledge. To Plato, knowledge was innate, part of one’s very being. One discovered truth not through experiencing worldly events, but through contemplation. You may remember references to “Plato’s cave.” Plato wrote a treatise entitled “Allegory of the Cave” (circa 380 B.C.E.) using the illustration of people chained in a cave who can only see a blank wall with shadows cast upon it. He argued that what we see (shadows in the cave) is not the truth. Thus, truth is not expressed in the material world but is only a reflection of what is actual knowledge, which is found within. Aristotle countered with an empiricist argument for knowledge. For him, knowledge and truth were found through experiential learning and evidence. Virtue, for example, had to be learned through practice, not mere contemplation. 


The modern world continued this discussion of the nature of knowledge with the addition of scientific discovery. While the West struggled with questions of knowledge in the Medieval period, the Arabic Muslim world made enormous advances in medicine, chemistry, algebra, and engineering. Arabic translations of Greek scholars aided in the spread of this knowledge to other regions. Later, Francis Bacon presented the first theory of modern science centered on the idea that truthful knowledge had to be based on unbiased observation of facts and evidence. With enough accumulation of data, we would acquire knowledge. Bacon countered Aristotle’s use of deductive reasoning (relying on pure intellectual exercise and individual experience) with the concept of inductive reasoning (relying on physical evidence based on experimentation and observation in the real world, not the mental/philosophical world). This shift to the realm of science pushed the nature of knowledge to another dimension. From Bacon of the 17th century to the Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century, knowledge centered on the perfection of human reason and the triumph of science over religion. By the time of the early 19th century, Western cultures embraced the view of positivism – if scientists and philosophers could understand what they assumed was a static body of knowledge about the world, they would have conquered the realm of the unknown. If we can measure it, we can understand it, and therefore know it. If the world is unchanging, this is an easy task.


Of course, the world has never been static in terms of knowledge. By the late 1800s, Western Europe experienced incredible political and intellectual upheaval. Cultural production of this era shows the crack in the idea of a solidified view of knowledge as steady human progress. Fin de Siecle art embraced the concept that human reality could not possibly be represented by traditional methods. Nietzsche espoused a philosophy that eschewed rationalism and advocated a view of knowledge as intensely personal and disconnected to traditions. By the time Freud and Einstein entered the picture in the early 20th century, “knowledge” was no longer a concept of debate. The concept itself was under attack.


Peter Drucker waded into this discussion in his 1957 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow. Drucker makes the case that knowledge is no longer about evidence, data, and experience. It is about power and how we use it. He refers to the world of Rene Descartes, who gave the world the way to organize knowledge in terms of measurement: the whole is a sum of its parts. But Drucker’s point in the late 1950s was that his world no longer made sense in viewing knowledge this way. The “new” world of Drucker’s era was one of understanding configurations rather than causes. Instead of trying to find measurements and empirical explanations for the events of the world, Drucker calls on us to look for patterns, ways of fitting seemingly unrelated events into a coherent explanation. This requires a new way of viewing knowledge.


We’ve had to wrestle with what knowledge is for centuries. We’re doing it again in the 21st century. We can’t make sense of disinformation campaigns on social media and developments with AI in terms of traditional understandings of knowledge as simply about data and evidence. How do we translate what we are experiencing today in terms of past disruptions, and how can those lessons help us navigate our treacherous waters? 


Next time: How has knowledge work evolved, and what might knowledge work look like in the future?

The Future of Knowledge Work: What Drucker can teach us

By Karen Linkletter Ph.D. • November 19, 2024
Interview with Karen Linkletter at the 16th Global Peter Drucker Forum 2024  Video Interview

The Specifics of Management of the Knowledge Worker

By Ryan Lee • November 7, 2024
Nowhere is management theory demanded more than in managing the knowledge worker, and yet nowhere is management theory more inadequate in addressing a field’s issues than in knowledge work. This is the point Peter Drucker posited in his work Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1991), and to resolve it he came up with six factors that determine the productivity of the management worker. Among these, his final point that management workers “must be treated as an ‘asset’ rather than a ‘cost’” by any given organization is an important concept1. While it only gradually emerged within management theory over the century, it is crucial for any employer and any government to understand and apply if they are to retain a competitive advantage going into the future. Historically, management theory has been about improving the output of the worker through banal efficiency: how to increase the production of steel per head, how to increase the production of cars per hour, how to minimize deficient products, etc. In all these considerations, the worker is a disposable resource. When he is hired, he is set to a particular task that is typically repetitive and thus easily taught, and when he is not needed because of shortcomings in his work, company difficulties, or automation, he is laid off. Referred to as “dumb oxen”, workers were seen in management theory as machines to have productivity squeezed out of. The shift from a majority manufacturing to service-based economy during the first half of the twentieth century changed this dynamic to some extent. The American postwar economic boom introduced the office worker as a common source of employment. This trend continued throughout the conglomerate era of the 1960s and was helped by the decline of the American manufacturing industry in the 1970s. Now in a stage dominated by service and knowledge work, the American economy must approach management differently. The aforementioned cost-asset shift is a demonstration of why this is so, as Drucker’s emphasis on the knowledge worker’s autonomy means that they wield control, not only within their job but over who they should work for as well. This in addition to the high-capital nature of knowledge workers means that the old management theory approach to labor as disposable will backfire catastrophically for any company that tries it with their knowledge workers. It is also important to remember the demographic trends of the United States, and more so the world, in considering why the cost-asset shift is vital. For all of human history until some fifty years ago, population was considered to be in tandem with economic power, given larger populations yielded larger labor forces and consumer markets. Economic growth was thus also correlated with population growth, demonstrated by the historic development of Europe and the United States and the more recent examples of the developing world. Consequently, the worldwide decline in fertility rates, and the decline in population numbers in some developed countries, signals economic decline for the future. In the labor market, smaller populations mean fewer jobs that produce for and service fewer people. Although the knowledge worker has grown in proportion to the total labor market, these demographic declines will affect knowledge workers as well, meaning employers will have a vested interest in retaining their high-capital labor. To enforce this, the cost-asset shift will have to come into play. The wants and needs of the knowledge worker pose a unique challenge in the field of management. Autonomy, for the first time, can be regarded as a significant factor affecting all other aspects of this labor base. What good does a large salary provide a knowledge worker if they don’t feel that they are welcome at an institution? How would they perceive that their work is not being directed towards productive pursuits at their corporation, especially given the brain work and dedication given to it? Of course, the fruits of one’s labor has been a contentious issue in management ever since compensation and workers’ rights became a universal constant with the Industrial Revolution, but this is augmented by the knowledge worker’s particular method of generating value. Given that Drucker poses their largest asset and source of value as their own mind, they will intrinsically have a special attachment to their work almost as their brainchild. Incentivizing the knowledge worker is also only one part of this picture. Per Drucker, the knowledge worker’s labor does not follow the linear relationship between quantity invested and returned. The elaborate nature of knowledge work makes it heavily dependent upon synergy: the right combination of talent can grow an organization by leaps and bounds, while virtually incompatible teams or partnerships can render all potential talent useless. And the human capital cost of the knowledge worker, both in their parents and the state educating them and in cost to their employers, is astronomical compared to all previous kinds of labor. In conclusion, the needs and wants of the knowledge worker must be met adequately, especially in the field of management. Management must almost undergo a revolution to adapt to this novel challenge, for the knowledge worker is the future of economic productivity in the developed world. Those employers that successfully accommodate the demands of this class of talent will eventually reign over those that do not accept that this is the direction economic productivity is headed.  References Drucker, P. F. (1991) Management Challenges for the 21st Century. Harper Business.

The Wisdom and Continuing Relevance of Peter Drucker

By Michael Cortrite Ph.D. • November 7, 2024
What is wisdom? The dictionary says it is knowledge of what is true and right coupled with just judgment as to action. Jennifer Rowley reports that it is the “ability to act critically or practically in a given situation. It is based on ethical judgment related to an individual's belief system.” (Rowley 2006 p. 255). So, wisdom seems to be about deciding on or doing an action based on moral or ethical belief in helping other people. This clearly describes Peter Drucker and his often prescient ideas For the 100 th anniversary of Peter Drucker’s birth, Harvard Business Review dedicated its November 2009 magazine to Drucker. In one of the articles about Drucker by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (2009 p. 1), What Would Peter Say? Kanter posits that, Heeding Peter Drucker's wisdom might have helped us avoid—and will help us solve numerous challenges, from restoring trust in business to tackling climate change. He issued early warnings about excessive executive pay, the auto industry’s failure to adapt and innovate, competitive threats from emerging markets, and the perils of neglecting nonprofit organizations and other agents of societal reform. Meynhardt (2010) calls Drucker a towering figure in Twentieth Century management. He says no other writer has had such an impact. He is well-known to practitioners and scholars for his practical wisdom and common sense approach to management as a liberal art. Drucker believed that there is no how-to solution for management practice and education. Doing more of “this” and less of “that” and vice versa is not how Drucker suggests managers do their work. Rather, Drucker relies more on morality and the virtue of practical wisdom to solve problems related to organizations. The virtue that Drucker talks about cannot be taught. It must be experienced and self-developed over time. A good example of this is Drucker’s Management by Objectives (MBO). Drucker does not give technical advice on how to initiate MBO. Rather he wisdomizes his moral convictions that integrating personal needs for autonomy with the quest of submitting one’s efforts to a higher principle (helping people) ensures performance by converting objective needs into personal goals. (Meynhardt, 2010). Peter Drucker published thirty-eight articles in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) and seven times won the McKinsey Award presented annually to the author of the best article published during the previous year in HBR. No other person has won as many McKinsey awards as Drucker The former editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, Thomas A. Stewart, quotes Peter Drucker; “The few of us who talked of management forty years ago were considered more or less deranged.” Stewart says that this was essentially correct. Harvard Business Review's very mission is to improve management practice. Stewart says this mission is inconceivable without Drucker’s work. Drucker’s work in management planted ideas that are as fruitful today as they ever were. Stewart posits that each year, managers discover extraordinary and immediate relevance in articles and books that were written before they were born or even before their parents were born. Stewart (2016) tries to answer the questions: Why does Drucker’s work endure? and Why is Drucker still relevant? First, was Drucker’s talent for asking the right questions. He had an instinct for being able to not let the urgent drive out the important, for seeing the trees, not just the forest. This allowed him to calmly ask pertinent questions that encouraged clients to find the proper course to take. Secondly, Drucker was able to see whole organizations. Instead of focusing on small particular problems. Ducker had the ability to find the overarching problem as well. Stewart uses Drucker’s 1994 HBR article, The Theory of the Business to make this point. Many people were trying to analyze the problems of IBM and General Motors by looking for root causes and trying to fix the blame. Drucker, on the other hand, argued correctly that the theories and assumptions on which they had managed successfully for many years were outdated. This article is as relevant today as it was in 1994 because Drucker took the “big picture view.” And no one else has ever been so skillful at describing it. Thirdly, starting in 1934, Drucker spent two years at General Motors with the legendary Alfred P. Sloan, immersed in the workings of the automaker and learning the business from within. This allowed him to talk with authority, but he has always stayed “street smart and wise.” This mentoring helped give Drucker the gift of being able to reason inductively and deductively. He could infer a new principle or a theory from a set of data or being confronted with a particular problem; he could find the right principle to apply to solve it. Drucker’s first article published in HBR, Management Must Manage, challenged managers to learn their profession not in terms of prerogatives but in terms of their responsibilities, to assume the burden of leadership rather than the mantle of privilege. Many in the management/leadership field probably found Drucker to be “deranged,” but in 2024, this is important advice for leader (Stewart 2006). Just a few more of Drucker’s ideas that seemed well outside the mainstream when he proposed them but are standard practice today include: Managing Oneself, Privatization, Decentralization, Knowledge Workers, Management by Objectives, Charismatic Leadership Being Overrated, CEO Outsize Pay Packages, and Enthusiasm of the Work of the Salvation Army (Rees, 2014). Clearly, Drucker remains relevant! References: Kanter, R. 2009. What would Peter say? Harvard Business Review. November, 2009. Meynhardt, T. 2010. The practical wisdom of Peter Drucker: Roots in the Christian tradition. Journal of Management Development Vol. 29. No. 7/8. Rees, M. 2014 The wisdom of Peter Drucker. Wall Street Journal. Dec. 12, 2014. Rowley, J. 2006. Where is the knowledge that we have lost in knowledge? Journal of Documentation. Vol. 62, Iss. 2. 251-270. Stewart, T. 2006. Classic Drucker. Editor Thomas A. Stewart. Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
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