This site contains information about my knowledge and wisdom research. I have put the site up in the hope it will generate more interest in new ways of thinking about and doing things related to knowledge management, knowledge economies (sometimes called conceptual economies), knowledge policy, and knowledge societies. I also hope I can stimulate more thinking about related subjects like wisdom, insight, maturity, creativity, and innovation. I do this because one thing that concerns me is that there is a lack of vision, imagination, and humanity in much current research, policy debate and management talk about knowledge and its related topics. For knowledge policy and management to make a real contribution to life it needs to be grounded in the every-day practices and qualities of humanity.

I am a humanist, and when seen from a humanist perspective dominant knowledge discourses lack intelligence and commonsense, and contain unreasonable and unrealistic assumptions. There is little genuine understanding of the fact that if we are to manage knowledge and innovation it should be to achieve a better life measured in cultural, social, environmental and economic terms. At the moment we have lost sight of this simple guiding principle. The focus of contemporary knowledge-related management and public policy discourses has therefore become fixed on filling the world with more science, engineering and technology. The assumption is that having more science and engineering knowledge and more technology causes life to improve. Although there is no doubt that science, engineering and technology are invaluable, this simplistic and naive assumption is not backed by any sober analysis of available historical evidence or knowledge research. 

It is important not to see knowledge as only an economically instrumental and technical resource. Knowledge can be economically instrumental and lead to the production of technology and technical known-how but there is much more to knowledge than this. The most important things to understand about knowledge are culture (patterns of behaviour, beliefs, values), integration of what what we know, learning processes, communication of ideas, and what is achieved through the use of knowledge. These are the fundamentals of knowledge systems. Knowledge is first and foremost about people and how they live their lives. 

Knowledge management and knowledge policy need to be done in light of knowledge about knowledge. Scholars have been thinking about knowledge for centuries and have much to tell about how to manage for it. Narrow instrumental views of what knowledge is are limiting for management and public policy and limit what can be achieved in terms of genuine social benefits that are also sustainable. There are even more benefits when management and policy initiatives are underpinned by understandings of wisdom, particularly practical wisdom (phronesis) or my variant of it, Social Practice Wisdom (SPW), developed in my most recent book, Wisdom and Management in the Knowledge Economy. For an enjoyable and informative introduction to wisdom click here and watch a TED video.

SPW coherently and appropriately (according to the situation) integrates intellectual and ethical virtues to create deliberative excellence that has a positive impact for humanity. In this sense it is an equanimous way of being and performing as an open-minded, knowledgeable, skilled and ethical communicator, member of society and activist. Such a person is necessarily open to new ideas, experiences and critique, and has well developed and practised predispositions to automatically strive for excellence and to create well-being. A socially wise practitioner also understands when to adapt to the environment and when to alter the environment in which they act. Furthermore, a socially wise practitioner empathetically and carefully considers others and their needs, including emotional and social needs, to find the right thing to do. However, despite understanding others so well a wise social practitioner is not manipulative.

Six important things about taking a Social Practice Wisdom approach (that are not well enough handled in knowledge, judgement, decision-making, and ethics literatures on their own) are that SPW: 

1. Gives due emphasis to social practice and relational aspects of being wise, particularly applying knowledge/theory through social practice (praxis) and dialogue because SPW is intrinsically communicative
2. Is clear about the roles and relevance of one's dispositions and habitus, including virtue, values and ethics, as well as openness and excellence (arete) 
3. Is clear about the roles of empathy, emotional expression (communication, dialogue, discourse), (Aristotelian) aesthetics (including eloquence and the art of communication), and equanimity, including emotional regulation
4. Explains the intersecting roles of equanimity, virtue, transcendence and reason, leading to ontological commitment through clear thinking based on ontological acuity and ontological labour, and then on to deep understandings (sunesis) and insight (including self-insight) that foster SPW
5. Focuses on processes of integration of values, knowledge and practice with culture, institutions and other social structures
6. Finally, SPW results in well-being or human flourishing (eudaimonia) and rises above narrow interests

The greatest challenge the world faces is global climate change. Global climate change radically threatens not just quality of life but the bases of life itself. The causal chain leading to global warming has clear and unambiguous links to the assumption that more knowledge, more science, more engineering, and more technology are necessarily good things. I call this the accumulative assumption, and argue it is deeply flawed. I have no problem with knowledge, science, engineering and technology in and of themselves, but I do have a problem if our focus on them excludes other even more important things like enlightenment, creativity, richness of social and cultural life, justice, democracy, well-being, and sustainability. What we need more of is wisdom. The 2007 to 2009 global financial crisis is also linked to the problems of knowledge in the absence of wisdom.

I teach and conduct research at UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Australia. You can find more information about me there. The people I have worked most closely with include Bernard McKenna, Phil Graham, Greg Hearn, Hannes Zacher, and Tom Mandeville. Others who I work with include David Pauleen, Kim Boal, Rene ten Bos, Jim Barker, Peter Liesch, and Brian Fitzgerald. Some of my major publications have involved collaborations with Steve Fuller, Ian Miles, Juli Eflin, Stuart Cunningham, Peter Drahos, Michael Peters, Peter Case, Jonathon Gosling, Matt Statler, and John Quiggin. Someone I have not worked is Baljit Grewal but I was lucky enough to be asked to examine his PhD thesis on Knowledge Policy. These are all interesting people and it is worth looking at their work too.

Two important research programs I lead at The University of Queensland are the UQ Wise Science Group and the Australian Applied Wisdom Group. Both these programs are built around multi disciplinary and multi faculty approaches to solving critical problems in the economy, society, and environment.

If you click the links in this sentence you will find information about my books, journal articles, and book chapters. You may also  want to have a look at my mini data warehouse and Blog.