Document Type
Article
Abstract
The problems organizations face have varying degrees of complexity. What is not often understood, however, is that the knowledge needed to solve these problems also varies in complexity, and should match the complexity of the problem itself. The current study provides grounded theory for how leaders in churches should approach problems relating to Intellectual Capital (IC) assets. These intangible assets are crucial to the ability of churches to create value that enriches the lives of individuals in their communities. In two, 90-minute focus groups, the leadership team of a United Methodist Church in South Carolina, USA was asked about their IC and their past, present, and future solutions to increasing IC value. Qualitative coding of these transcripts found that leadership often provided knowledgebased solutions that did not match the assumed complexity of the IC problem. This caused numerous failures in the maintenance of IC. It is suggested that church leadership view all problems as knowledge problems to uncover these hidden assumptions of complexity, and use these assumptions to seek out knowledge-based solutions that match that complexity. These findings can be extended to non-religious contexts.
Publication Info
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2016, pages 1-10.
© Proceedings of the Association for Information Science & Technology 2016, Wiley
Freeburg, D. (2016). Intellectual capital in churches: Matching solution complexity with problem complexity. Proceedings Of The Association For Information Science And Technology, 53(1), 1-10.