Knowledge Management Thought Leader 116: Chun Wei Choo

Originally posted 05-Jun-25

Chun Wei Choo is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto. His research interests include information and knowledge management, information behavior, environmental scanning, organizational learning, organizational epistemology, and early warning.

Chun Wei received an honorary doctorate for his contribution to the study of the relationship between information science and knowledge management. He received the ASIS&T Research in Information Science Award for his outstanding contribution to information science research.

Chun Wei sees sense-making as related to the management of ambiguity; knowledge-creating as related to the management of learning; and decision-making as related to the management of uncertainty. These form three points on the triangle (the apexes) and the gap between sensing and knowing, sensing and doing, and knowing and doing is addressed through other sets of activities. At the individual level, he distinguishes between sensing (noticing potentially important messages in the environment) and making sense (constructing meaning from what has been sensed) as critical to organizations today.

Here are definitions for five of Chun Wei’s specialties:

• Knowledge Sharing: An activity through which information or expertise is exchanged between people within or between organizations and communities.
• Organizational Epistemology: A field of study that examines how organizations create, manage, and utilize knowledge. It explores the nature of knowledge within organizations, the processes of knowledge development, and how knowledge influences organizational behavior and outcomes. Key aspects include the distinction between individual and social knowledge and the impact of organizational culture on knowledge management.
• Organizational Learning: The capacity of the organization to acquire the knowledge necessary to survive and compete in its environment.
• Sense-making: The process of creating situational awareness and understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty in order to make decisions. It is a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively.
• Trust: The faith you have in someone that they will always remain loyal to you. To trust someone means that you can rely on them and are comfortable confiding in them because you feel safe with them.

Chun Wei created the following content. I have curated it to represent his contributions to the field. For more about Chun Wei, see Profiles in Knowledge.

Books

Sensemaking, Knowledge Creation, and Decision Making: Organizational Knowing as Emergent Strategy

Three kinds of knowledge:

1. Tacit knowledge in the expertise and experience of individuals
2. Explicit or rule-based knowledge in artifacts, rules and routines
3. Cultural knowledge in the assumptions and beliefs used by members to assign value and significance to new information or knowledge

Three kinds of knowledge creation:

1. Knowledge conversion: the organization continuously creates new knowledge by converting between the personal, tacit knowledge of individuals who develop creative insight, and the shared, explicit knowledge by which the organization develops new products and innovations.
2. Knowledge integration: the result of the organization’s ability to coordinate and integrate the knowledge of many individual specialists.
3. Knowledge transfer: across organizational boundaries; can involve tacit, explicit, and cultural knowledge to varying degrees.

Four modes of organizational decision making:

1. Boundedly rational mode: goal and procedural clarity are both high, choice is guided by performance programs
2. Political mode: contested by interest groups, but procedural certainty is high within the groups; each group believes that its preferred alternative is best for the organization
3. Anarchic mode: goal and procedural uncertainty are both high; decision situations consist of relatively independent streams of problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities arriving and leaving; a decision then happens when problems, solutions, participants, and choices coincide
4. Process mode: goals are clear but the methods to attain them are not; decision making becomes a process divided into three phases:

• Identification: recognizes the need for decision and develops an understanding of the decision issues
• Development: activates search and design routines to develop one or more solutions to address a problem, crisis, or opportunity
• Selection: evaluates the alternatives and chooses a solution for commitment to action

The Knowing Organization as Learning Organization

Sensemaking, Knowledge Creating, and Decision Making

The Organizational Knowing Cycle

Corporate Memory Processes in Project-Based Organizations

Corporate Memory Retention structures