Back to the future for KM: the case for sensible organisation

There are many times in our brave new Web-based world that we seem to have lost the art of making common sense decisions and judgements. The current organisational environment begs an agenda for knowledge management that rediscovers values from the past, fulfilling the promise of ‘sensible organisation’. In research over the past 8 years, a great team of colleagues and I have explored various factors that contribute to the creation of intellectual, social and emotional capital in enterprises and communities, reinforcing our position that most innovative work involving new knowledge creation takes place in cooperative, self-directed teams. The proposed concept ‘sensible organisation’ is not new but a return to past skills and attitudes that might have been lost in the sophistication of an impersonal modern workplace.