The Organizing Pattern of Interaction: A Knowledge Centric Approach

The organizing pattern of interaction moves from less to more understanding about the relationships that exist between concepts. The current view of organizing activities is primarily a data-centric view. Organizing is not an end in itself but is an enabler of follow-on activities. This paper espouses a knowledge-centric view of organizing that broadens the conceptual understanding of organizing. Referent research disciplines in knowledge representation and knowledge management are used to examine the basic definition and role of conceptual organization from a philosophical and theoretical perspective. A case study of a collaborative research project to develop an ontological model of the social process and its use in a large scale collaborative engineering project is described. This research concludes that organizational schemas operate as both means and ends in collaboration engineering. Measures of efficiency are data-centric and examine organizing schemas as means. Measures of effectiveness are knowledge-centric and examine organizing schemas as ends.