Table of Contents

• Purpose of this document
• Why we use the "knowledge ecology" metaphor
• Fundamental Principles, Beliefs and Values
• Operating Principles
• Practices
• The Role of Technology
• Organization Design Principles
• Process for Change of this Document
• Intended Uses of this Document
• Personal Declarations of Commitment
• Signers

We find ourselves at a point where the coming together of new thinking in the sciences and philosophy, capabilities that technology offers, social responsibility, and economic evolution generate an unprecedented opportunity. That opportunity is to create organizations where people's capacity to manifest their highest aspirations is nurtured and enhanced. It is now possible to integrate productive activity with learning, growth and self expression. When that happens we align the social interests of mutual activity with the interests of individual human beings.

This document has emerged from a dialogue which is in its early stages. Changes will be made when the will of the community is expressed sufficiently to warrant them. These changes to the source document will emerge from practical experience, use and the increasing knowledge produced from that use.

The original of this document was formulated in the Source Document workshop of Knowledge Ecology Fair 98.

Purpose of this document

That there be a community which is bound by members' affinity based in value for human freedom of expression, growth and development. That there be a community which develops a body of knowledge, applying technology in human ways, that is increasing our capacity to accomplish these values. That the body of knowledge and practices developed from it create environments which call forth learning in our productive institutions and organizations. That there be a community that lives by these values and their body of knowledge.

This document provides the formal declaration of intention, the basic principles to realize that intention, and the minimal structures required for its continued vibrant growth and development. The creators of this document intend it as the basis around which a community will form that will transform our productive institutions into more human places of activity that become increasingly viable and serving of the larger communities which provide their reason for being.

While knowledge management and much technology exists to handle information, there is little appreciation and understanding of knowledge and the environment or culture required to maintain and generate knowledge. We use the term "knowledge ecology" to refer to this larger context.

The purpose of the Source Document is to provide a basis and a structure for the continued development of the design and enabling conditions for a sustainable global community of knowledge practitioners, that we refer to as a "Knowledge Ecology Network" (KEN).

Why we use the "knowledge ecology" metaphor

When we can begin to view human institutions as emerging naturally from the interaction of different individuals and communities with different social and natural environments, we can begin to appreciate the robust and healthy nature of the fundamentals of our life in and with those institutions. The basic function of these human institutions is to expand the possibilities of human life.

This is in contrast to the predominate metaphor at the time of formulation of this document which is a mechanistic, engineering model of linear hierarchy, command and control, and of understanding based on reduction to component parts with a linear cause and effect relationship. This metaphor, and its language and concepts, may be the single most important source of our current organizational and institutional ills.

While there are many metaphors which can be used, we will use the natural world ecology as the main one. This allows us to introduce a great variety of conditions and examples from a field which is already quite well developed and emphasizes the social dependencies from which knowledge emerges and is maintained.

We find that any living systems metaphorical use, such as animals, human systems like marketplaces, an individual and a brain, can contribute to introduce specific issues of mind, intention and co-operative language for understanding "knowledge ecology" in practice.

Fundamental Principles, Beliefs and Values

We declare there are fundamental principles which guide the emergence of human institutions and the behaviour of individuals within and toward those institutions. The violation of these principles produces harm and wrong to individuals and society while their authentic pursuit brings that joy and satisfaction natural to human existence.

We declare that human beings function together best when there is freedom, organization and the opportunity for responsibility, productive work and the development of knowledge. We declare that increasing knowledge about how we increase knowledge, particularly focused on the environments (including social practices and tools) which do that, is of utmost importance and that all who participate in that venture will benefit.

We declare that knowledge emerges from the interaction of individuals and their institutions as they make meaning together. We declare that knowledge is not contained in individual disciplines or people but is generated in self-perpetuating, dynamic ways by interaction across all boundaries of science, geography and discipline. We declare that there are environments that support this generation and environments that inhibit it - and that these are open to the influences of our intentions and designs.

Operating Principles

To achieve the benefits of these fundamental principles, beliefs and values, we are creating a community which is committed to their realization. The operating principles that we declare to be necessary for achieving the intentions of forming the KEN are:

1. Each individual has something to contribute from their personal history and current intentions which will increase the richness and future possibility of their communities. They will be encouraged to contribute that and structures and practices will support that intention.

2. Each individual and corporation is capable of growth and development and the KEN community will encourage institutions to create the conditions for that to occur.

3. Increasing social knowledge is the basis for future viability of both institutions and those who participate in them and we will constantly challenge current knowledge in the pursuit of what is possible.

4. Knowledge is created, renewed and maintained by continuing connection to the larger environment in which it exists and its synergistic and emergent possibilities arise in this way.

5. Freedom is the natural condition for individuals and each individual is responsible for their contribution to the whole and for seeking that which will connect them to the whole.

6. Knowledge compounds when it is engaged with the larger environment. It will be actively shared with others to enhance the possibilities of rapid development and application.

7. Knowledge is situated in individuals, communities and institutions and each has the right to be given credit for what they create and acknowledged for their contribution.

8. The source of the value of knowledge is use rather than mere possession and we promote the application and use of knowledge.

Institutions, including our own community, which operate from these operating principles will continually move towards the attainment of the intentions and values of a knowledge ecology. These principles are designed as a set to capture the synergy between individual expression and social co-operative productive capacity.

Practices

We commit to practices which will forward our intentions and create the culture and environment where they will flourish in all institutions and communities of which we are a part. These practices will generate an environment of trust, respect for individuals and diversity, responsibility, creativity, risk taking and mutual support. In particular, our behaviour and action and regular practices will encourage the continuous development of knowledge at all levels - individual, community, institution and social - and call for continual challenge of what we are for what we can become.

It is important that we be able to state our practices and standards in this respect and be willing to demonstrate how we are supporting, by our actions, the environment that we commit to. It is important that we are free to challenge and be challenged in this regard. The fundamental test is not if we have the "right" practices but that we have explicit ones that we are practicing and open to question about.

We commit to practices which encourage listening, dialogue, participation, openness, inquiry, reflection, sharing and increasing knowledge for ourselves, those around us and the whole corporation or community. We commit to these practices in the context of realization of the synergy between personal growth and expression and organizational productivity.

The Role of Technology

The possibility of a knowledge ecology has transformed over the last decades with the development of technology and approaches based in that technology. We can now communicate in ways unimagined before. We can now gain access to information and the knowledge of others beyond anything imagined only a few years ago. These tools and technologies have grown much faster than our capacity to employ them in ways that serve us.

We declare that the role of technology is to enhance human possibility. Technology should free us to realize more fully our values, intentions and possibilities. The combination of technology, practices and environment should continually increase the ease of use, access to, and contribution to knowledge.

Technology should support our fundamental declaration of values and not undermine them in any way. Technology should be in our service and not designed so that we are in its service.

We are continually confronted with the challenge of using technology to serve both the interests of individuals and of larger communities and human institutions. We will meet these challenges successfully by focussing technology on the increase of knowledge, individually and for the whole.

We will continually develop combinations of practice and technology to serve our needs for full humanity, both social and individual.

Organization Design Principles

The challenge for our human institutions is to create structure and organization that is a match for the principles, beliefs and values we have declared. Our inherited structures and practices were based in a different model and inhibit many of our intentions in the area of developing a knowledge ecology. The following principles for organization design form the basis of our knowledge ecology:

1. Knowledge will be made widely available and easily accessible.

2. Dialogue and communication will be encouraged and facilitated and reputations will be built and valued by the community.

3. No single person or formal group may decide issues for the rest of the community once fundamental principles of the source document are committed to as the basis of participation.

4. Each person will be responsible for their own success in the community and each will be responsible for the success of at least some others within the community.

5. The community will always be open to self-questioning.

6. Accountability for participation and results will be a matter of mutual agreement and there will be no formal hierarchical control. Individual accountability for any aspect may be agreed and may be exercised fully when agreed.

7. The community will measure itself against rates of change and successful application of knowledge to interests of its members.

8. Teams and projects will be the way of conducting affairs and all will be subject to tests of current relevance.

Process for Change of this Document

This document, once formally accepted and made public by the initial Core Group of the Knowledge Ecology Network, will be the formal text for reference to interpret the choices, decisions and actions of the community. The document is intended to be in constant use, to encourage active dialogue and to help change to emerge or evolve over time.

When it is apparent to the community, by expression of a significant majority of community members, that change to the formal document is called for, then an open process of dialogue in a focussed place will be set up. This place will remain open for at least one month, and no longer than three months, after that the then current leadership structure will propose either that no change be made or propose a specific change. The proposal will be put to an electronic vote and, for a change to be made, the vote must be at least 70% of those voting in favor which total must represent over 50% of the total registered community. From the moment of setting up the focussed place for dialogue, the process must be completed within 90 days unless formally extended but may not extend beyond 180 days in any case.

There will be a leadership group which is created by vote and which will be responsible for the management structures, the Source Document and the creation of other teams as required to maintain the KEN. The leadership team and all teams formally created by that team will be elected and no term may extend beyond two years without re-election.

Intended Uses of this Document

This document is designed for the purpose of informing action and providing a common, agreed base or framework for interpretation of action, events and intentions. It is designed for the purpose of continually anchoring the possible future to the deepest of our shared values and the best of our past. It is intended as a text against which choices, decisions and action can be judged.

The document is also intended to provide a grounding or orientation for the vision, attraction and operation of our community.

The design is to enable and encourage the emergence of a robust and viable community which is continually contributing to the conduct of those social affairs carried out by institutions and corporations in whatever form. It is, in that regard, to include minimum provision of rules, practices and structure to ensure the effective operation of the community.

Personal Declarations of Commitment

We declare these to constitute the total formal nature of our community. These may be changed when there is an overwhelming expression for that change. This source document is meant to be constantly challenged based on new understanding and new circumstances but to remain constant in spirit and intention.

We also declare that the continuing viability of this community will be a matter of regular action and interaction and that the source document can only function effectively when it is kept alive by integrity between regular practice, formal structure and dialogue. We also recognize that there are many variations and models which fit within the source document and encourage the experimentation, richness and new development which that space allows.

We commit ourselves to the constant pursuit of the values, practices and intentions of our community and this declaration.

Signers

Jinette de Gooijer
Ingemar Falkehag
Craig Maudlin
Michael McMaster
Mihaela Moussou
Peter Murchland
Edna Pasher
George Pór
Nancy White
Susanne Williams