Knowledge Creation and Sharing: A Role For Complex Methods of Inquiry and Paraconsistent Logic

Abstract

Strategic intelligence involves examination of internal and external organizational environments. Of course people inhabited each of these environments. Whether they are customers, allies or employees, these are not standardized units but real human beings with personal histories, perspectives, and opinions. Recent research and practice have led to the development of relatively complex methods for inquiry which can be applied by human analysts and which recognize contextual dependencies in a problem situation. One such method, the strategic systemic thinking framework, is outlined in this chapter. The purpose of complex analysis in relation to strategic intelligence is not, in our perspective, decision-making—it is developing an ability to make informed decisions. Until software tools could not support recently complex methods, since the limitations of traditional mathematical algorithms constrained their development. We suggest a model, which lays the foundations for the development of software support and can tolerate the inherent ambiguity in complex analysis, based on paraconsistent (multivalued) mathematical logic.