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Even as the participants considered to what extent politics, fragmentation
and distraction hinder the learning process, a question also began to form
about whether these same “problems” could also be used to accelerate the
generation of value from knowledge and learning.
If, as Smelser points out, the fragmentation of academic agendas is at least
partly due to the competition for scarce resources such as department
budgets and peer recognition, then it’s little surprise that politics plays
such a big part in academia.
 But does Smelser’s self-critical analysis of learning barriers and
fragmentation in the social sciences offer a template by which public and
private sector organizations might examine their own successes and
shortcomings?
Can the bottom-line focus in business that brings additional incentives for
making learning work find acceptance in the “non-profit” environments of
government and education?
And if the maddening political barriers that are so obvious in government
institutions are universally present in business, can the slow progress made
in overcoming those barriers in the public sector prove even more useful in
the private sector and academia?
The kind of Balkanization of ideas Smelser mentions is certainly present in
public policy. But it is also present in business. Look at the proliferation
of incompatible protocols in wireless telephony in the United States. Look
at the self-defeating diversity of market buzzwords in the application of
information technology to business strategy: knowledge management, data
mining, customer relationship management, business intelligence, enterprise
information portals, etc. |
