Management & Marketing no. 2/2010

Mapping wisdom as a complex adaptive system

J. Martin HAYS,
The Australian National University, Australia

Abstract. This is the second of two papers concerning wisdom as an ecosystem appearing in sequential editions of Management & Marketing journal. The notion of wisdom as an ecosystem, or „the wisdom ecology”, builds on work by Hays (2007) who first identified wisdom as an organisational construct and proposed a dynamic model of it. The centrepiece of this and its former companion paper is a relationship map of the Wisdom Ecosystem (the Causal Loop Diagram at Figure 1). The first paper, „The Ecology of Wisdom”, introduced readers to the topics of wisdom and complex adaptive systems, and presented a dynamic model of the Wisdom Ecosystem. This second paper discusses systems dynamics modelling (mapping systems) and covers the Wisdom Ecosystem model in detail. It describes the four domains, or subsystems, of the Wisdom Ecosystem, Dialogue, Communal Mind, Collective Intelligence, and Wisdom, and walks readers through the model, exploring each of its 25 elements in turn. It examines the relationships amongst system elements and illuminates important aspects of systems function, providing a rare tutorial on developing and using Causal Loop Diagrams.

Keyword: Causal Loop Diagramming, Complexity, Dialogue, Organisational Learning, Systems Dynamics, Wisdom.

Download full article