O trapezista (parte IV)

Continuado de parte III, parte II e parte I.
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Ontem ao final da tarde, enquanto aguardava o início de uma reunião, mergulhei no capítulo "Mapping Successful Organizational Routines" de Véronique Ambrosini e Cliff Bowman incluído no livro "Mapping Strategic Knowledge" editado por Anne Sigismund Huff e Mark Jenkins.
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E foi interessante encontrar, numa linguagem mais elaborada, o que de certa forma tenho tentado descrever ao longo desta série:
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"tacit knowledge has been argued to be a source of competitive advantage largely because it is difficult to express, it generates causal ambiguity, it is practical, and it is context-specific ... tacit knowledge possesses all the requirements that a ‘resource’ needs to have to be a source of sustainable competitive advantage it is valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and imperfectly substitutable.
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There are various types of cognitive maps. One of them is the cause map or causal map: ‘a cause map is a form of cognitive map that incorporates concepts tied together by causality relations’.
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causal maps reflect what is understood to be happening in an organization. (Moi ici: Algo que está acontecendo, algo que está em fluxo, algo que não está limitado e fechado, algo que está em evolução) One of the main benefits of using cognitive maps is that they ‘place concepts in relation to one another, ... they impose structure on vague situations'. Cause maps are therefore a way of ordering and analysing something that is ‘fuzzy’. These maps are also useful in eliciting tacit routines because they allow us to study issues at a microlevel; they can also represent multiple explanations and consequences, (Moi ici: Muito mais rico que um texto escrito, para descrever uma realidade incerta e em desenvolvimento) show interrelationships between factors, and potential dilemmas.
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‘the only reasonable claim that can be made of cognitive maps as an artefact ... is that ... they may represent subjective data more meaningfully than other models'. They are simply used as a technique that would allow us to elicit tacit routines.
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a group map ‘as a visual interactive model, acts in the form of a ... transitional object that encourages dialogues’
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Among the reasons behind the claim that metaphors can help express what is not easily articulable is that metaphors can generate new meaning.
They can ‘render vague and abstract ideas concrete’. Because they allow different ways of thinking, people may be able to explain complex organizational phenomena metaphorically. Metaphors can ‘transmit an entire story visually using one image’. This idea of image is central in understanding the argument concerning the articulation of tacit knowledge through metaphors. Because metaphors are vivid images, they may substitute for a large number of words and they are ‘useful in coping with a large amount of data’. Images also allow us to speak about process because they are not discrete. This matters because tacit routines are capabilities; they are a process (they are about how to do things).
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language [is a] discrete symbols system ... words partition experiences. [However] experience does not arrive in little discrete packets, but flows, leading us imperceptibly from one state to another. (Moi ici: Isto é tão "trapezista parte II") Thus the task we have to perform in communication is to convey what is usually some kind of continuum by using discrete symbols. It would not be surprising if discrete symbol systems were incapable of literally capturing every conceivable aspect of an object, event or experience that one might wish to describe. ...
This deficiency is filled by metaphor. Metaphors are a means of capturing the continuous flow of experience, hence they can be a means of capturing tacit knowledge. ‘They allow the transfer of concrete bands of experience whereas literal discourse segments experiences’. ‘One can say through metaphor what cannot be said in discrete, literal terms, especially when words are not available or do not exist’."
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Cool!