The Three Phases of Max Boisot’s Theorizing
The Three Phases of Max Boisot’s Theorizing
Max’s PhD re-framed Weber’s (and Needham’s) classic question of why China failed to generate an industrial revolution in a remarkably novel way. His codification-diffusion matrix suggested Western economic institutions were better able to generate, manage, and apply their knowledge assets - the key driver. Notably, Max attacked Williamson’s markets and hierarchy thesis for his failure to consider federation as a third viable mode of institutional knowledge governance. In his second phase Max explored institutional contrasts between China and the West empirically and the codification-diffusion matrix evolved a third epistemological dimension - abstraction - to become the I-Space. In his third phase, drawing again on French thermodynamics and entropy theory, Max probed the I-Space’s self-regulating and self-organizing properties. Thus his thinking eventually returned to the complexity theory approach anticipated in his PhD. Finally these three phases formed the supporting arc of an entirely novel knowledge-based view of organizing.
Keywords: Knowledge Asset, Codification, Diffusion, Abstraction, Self-organization
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