Page 229 - DCAP208_Management Support Systems

Management Support Systems

Notes What are the Knowledge Structures that Human Memory Uses?

Higher level knowledge structures, about more complex issues than those dealt with by scripts,
hinge upon the notion of abstraction and generalization. Scripts are specific sets of information
associated with specific situations that frequently repeat themselves. Scripts are a source of
information, naturally acquired by having undergone an experience many times, yielding the
notion of a script as a very specific set of sequential facts about a very specific situation. Scripts
allow one to organize low level sequential knowledge in a KM. Higher level, more abstract
notions, enable learning because they allow sharing of knowledge across script boundaries.
Consider “fixing something.” Is this a script? Not really. There might be many scripts each
dependent upon what you are fixing. But, if we treat each instance of fixing something as
different from every other one, how will we get smarter as a result of having fixed something
when we encounter something different that has to be fixed? It is reasonable to assume that
people who fix things do get smarter about the process each time. They learn. The question is
“how?”

In any knowledge-based understanding system, any given set of materials can be stored in
either a script-organized or plan/goal-based form. If we choose to give up generalizability,
then we can use a script based organization for a KM system. This is more efficient in the short
term. Knowing a great deal about a discrete set of roles and tasks in a human organization is a
good way to organize information within that organization.
But information organized by scripts never transcends the boundaries of those scripts. Any
knowing system must be able to know a great deal about one script without losing the power to
apply generalizations drawn from that knowledge to a different set of issues within the system.

Did u know? A script, and any other memory structure, should be part of a dynamic
memory, changeable as a result of incorporating new experiences.

Any structure proposed for organizing information within a KM must be capable of self-
modification. Such modification comes about as a result of new events differing in some way
from the normative events that a script describes.
When new information is placed in a dynamically organized KM, if that information simply
amplifies or clarifies the script to which it belongs, then it is simply added to it. On the other
hand, when a new event modifies the script, its difference must be noted. And its difference must
be applied to all structures to which it is relevant.

By utilizing general structures to encode what we know in memory, a system can learn. Given
enough modifications from a script, an intelligent system would begin to create new general
structures that account for those differences. That is, just because an episode is new once, it does
not follow that it should be seen as forever new. Eventually we will recognize what was once
novel as “old hat.” To do this, we must be constantly modifying our general structures, which,
as we have said, is what we mean by a dynamic memory.
All this depends on detailed information, like scripts, that describe the processes in a situation.
To put this another way, there cannot be, at least for quiet some time, generalized KM systems
that work for every industry or every enterprise. The backbone of intelligence is knowledge of
situations. You don’t ask a novice to captain a ship, nor do you ask a beginning salesman to call
on your biggest account. An organization knows quite a bit about the processes involved in
these situations. We can say what a ship captain does, not simply, but we can say it. And, we can
say what a salesman does. Further we can say the experiences a company has had with selling
into a particular company or with a particular client or with clients who are like a prospective
client.

222 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY