Framework Parent: Systematized Knowledge Commons
Applicative Context: Application Cases
Change by all in a Group
A collective regulative bundle methodology builds upon a facility for sharing certain programme and project artefacts by all in the group. Such a group can be small, for example the workers on a farm, or big, for example all inhabitants of a country, or all living members of mankind.
Preparing for change can be a very knowledge intensive activity. In current practice, the knowledge pertinent to change gets dissipated, fragmented and reworded in innumerable documents and texts. Such practice hampers our collaborative diagnostics capability and collaborative therapeutics skills.
The collective regulative bundle methodology emphasizes systematized knowledge commons as reuseable programme and project artefacts. Published and maintained on the web, these artefacts can enable programme and project practices such as those advocated by the UK Office of Government Commerce [1], but for a much smaller overall cost and effort.
Moreover in cases where the group's interactions are ICT-reliant[2], these programme and project artefacts can feed (system) development approaches that leverage the formal approach to systems modeling and enterprise architecture tools[3].
Change Methodology
Change is one of the areas where the articulation of knowledge commons can bring enormous social savings. The Convention on Knowledge Commons is an institutional measure to enable us to achieve those savings. The Collective Regulative Bundle (CRB) methodology that we advocate is based on the Regulative Cycle.
Regulative Cycle
Originating in psychological practice, the regulative cycle [4] has been extensively applied as a methodology of (clinical) practice, geared towards the "interested" regulation of the behaviour of groups or organizations in the desired direction. The cycle includes the activities evaluation (of work system operations with respect to an instrument or via benchmarking), problem identification (selection from a problem mess), diagnosis (of the problem situation – analysis), plan of action (design), and intervention (implementation).
Collective Regulative Bundle (CRB)
The Collective Regulative Bundle merges the activities that individuals, groups, organizations and agencies perform to improve their being and doing. It is conceived as the bundling of the regulative cycles that individuals may perform.
A very simple case is included here to illustrate the basic terminology. For each italic term, there is a more detailed description that can be accessed at the wiki dedicated to the definition of the CRB Methodology. The case illustrates both the daily-life-embedded character of initiatives, and the key terms used in the CRB Methodology.
Introductory Case: My car has a flat tire
It will happen to you. You are bringing a friend and his family to the airport. After completing his phd in Belgium, with wife and two kids, your friend is leaving to return to his home country Sri Lanka. The ride is short, less than 30 minutes. You just got on the highway, and there you sense the problem. You can manage to get on the shoulder of the road, and now you must in no time replace the flat tire of your car, for the first time in your life.
The car is part of a worksystem which offers mobility to its driver and passengers. The lifecycle stages of System Operation and Maintenance (SOM) and System Development (SD) are present, with several foci in the activities [5]:
Change in Vulnerable Livelihoods
There is an excellent online tutorial on poverty and livelihood in development cooperation [6].
Knowledge management and governance issues that come into play in the dialogue between researchers and local knowledge systems have been illustrated in a paper on mutual learning and empowerment in rural India [7].
