Time-Based Frameworks for Valuing Knowledge : Maintaining Strategic Knowledge

To survive and flourish in a changing and unpredictable world, organizations and people must maintain strategic power over necessary resources - often in the face of competition. Knowledge contributes to that strategic power. Without vigilance to maintain its currency and accuracy, the value of knowledge depreciates as circumstances change over time. Karl Popper's evolutionary epistemology and Maturana and Varela's concept of autopoiesis provide a paradigmatic framework for considering the roles and importance of time in constructing knowledge and using it to maintain strategic power. Following Popper, knowledge is constructed, used and evaluated via cyclically-iterated processes. We introduce nine time-based frames of reference based in this Popperian autopoietic paradigm to explore the relationships between time and a utility-based valuation of knowledge as it is constructed and applied. We believe this framework and associated paradigmatically consistent vocabulary provide useful tools for analyzing organizational knowledge management needs