Abstract
Since the early 21st Century, building a Knowledge Society represents an aspiration not only for the developed countries, but for the developing ones too. There is an increasing concern worldwide for rendering this process manageable towards a sustainable, equitable and ethically sound societal system. As proper management, including at the societal level, requires both wisdom and measurement, the operationalisation of the Knowledge Society concept encompasses a qualitative side, related to vision-building, and a quantitative one, pertaining to designing and using dedicated metrics. The endeavour of enabling policy-makers mapping, steering and monitoring the sustainable development of the Knowledge Society at national level, in a world increasingly based on creativity, learning and open communication, led researchers to devising a wide range of composite indexes. However, as such indexes are generated through weighting and aggregation, their usefulness is limited to retrospectively assessing and comparing levels and states already attained; therefore, to better serve policy-making purposes, composite indexes should be complemented by other instruments. Complexification, inspired by the systemic paradigm, allows obtaining "rich pictures" of the Knowledge Society; to this end, a multi-dimensional scorecard of the Knowledge Society development is hereby suggested, that seeks a more contextual orientation towards sustainability. It is assumed that, in the case of the Knowledge Society, the sustainability condition goes well beyond the "greening" desideratum and should be of a higher order, relying upon the conversion of natural and productive life-cycles into virtuous circles of self-sustainability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
U.N. Department of Economic of Economic and Social Affairs: Expanding Public Space for the Development of the Knowledge Society. Report of the Ad Hoc Expert Group Meeting on Knowledge Systems for Development, September 4-5, United Nations, New York (2003), http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN014138.pdf
Barzilai-Nahon, K.: Gaps and bits: conceptualizing measurements for digital divide/s. The Information Society 22, 269–278 (2006)
Spangenberg, J.H.: Will the information society be sustainable?: Towards criteria and indicators for a sustainable knowledge society. International J. of Innovation and Sustainable Development 1, 85–102 (2005)
Sharma, R.S., Ng, E.W.J., Dharmawirya, M., Lee, C.K.: Beyond the digital divide: A conceptual framework for analyzing knowledge societies. J. of Knowledge Management 12, 151–164 (2008)
Orr, D.R.: Four Challenges of Sustainability. School of Natural Resources, University of Vermont (2003), http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/4CofS.pdf
Wiig, K.M.: Effective societal knowledge management. J. of Knowledge Management 11, 141–156 (2007)
Joux, A.: Theoretical approaches of the knowledge society at UNESCO. Communications 31, 193–214 (2002)
Loveridge, D.: On sustainability. "Ideas in Progress" series, paper no. 14, PREST, University of Manchester, Manchester (1999), http://www.personal.mbs.ac.uk/dloveridge/documents/on-sustainability_wp14.pdf
Cam, C.N.: A conceptual framework for socio-techno-centric approach to sustainable development. International J. of Technology Management and Sustainable Development 3, 59–66 (2004)
Sustainable Society Foundation: Description of the Sustainable Society Index, SSI (2008), http://www.sustainablesocietyindex.com/ssi-description.htm
Clark, W.C., Dickson, N.M.: Sustainability science: The emerging research program. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100, 8059–8061 (2003)
Gallopín, G., Vessuri, H.: Science for Sustainable Development: Articulating Knowledges. In: Guimarães Pereira, A., et al. (eds.) Interfaces between Science and Society, pp. 35–51. Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield (2006)
Fontela, E.: Foresighting the new technology wave. EC-HLEG Key Technologies, Brussels (2005), ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/foresight/docs/kte_toward_sks.pdf
Fuchs, C.: Sustainability and the Information Society. In: Berleur, J., Nurminen, M., Impagliazzo, J. (eds.) Social Informatics: An Information Society for all? In Remembrance of Rob Kling, pp. 219–230. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Sharma, R.S., Wirawan, A., Foong, S.G.C., Win, Y.M.: Bridging the knowledge gap in developing societies: A field study of Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar. The International J. of Technology, Knowledge and Society (to appear, 2009)
Bender, M.J., Simonovic, S.P.: Consensus as the measure of sustainability. Hydrological Sciences 42, 493–500 (1997)
D’Orville, H.: Towards the global Knowledge and Information Society – The challenges for development cooperation, INFO 21, United Nations Development Program (2000), http://www.undp.org/info21/public/pb-challenge.html
ITU: Measuring the Information Society. The ICT Development Index, ITU, Geneva (2009)
Hüsing, T., Selhofer, H.: DIDIX: A digital divide index for measuring inequality in IT diffusion. IT & Society 1, 21–38 (2004)
ITU & UNCTAD: World Information Society Report 2007. Beyond WSIS. ITU, Geneva (2007)
Economist Intelligence Unit & IBM Institute for Business Value: E-readiness rankings 2008. Maintaining momentum. Economist Intelligence Unit, London, New York, Hong Kong (2008)
Huggins, R., Izushi, H., Davies, W., Shougui, L.: World Knowledge Competitiveness Index 2008. Centre for International Competitiveness, Cardiff School of Management, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (2008)
World Bank Institute: Measuring Knowledge in the World’s Economies, Knowledge Assessment Methodology and Knowledge Economy Index. The World Bank, Washington, D.C (2008)
Dutta, S., Mia, I.: The Global Information Technology Report 2008 - 2009. Mobility in a Networked World. INSEAD and World Economic Forum (2009)
Eriksson, D.: A principal exposition of Jean-Louis Le Moigne’s systemic theory. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 4, 35–77 (1997)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Dragomirescu, H., Sharma, R.S. (2009). Operationalising the Sustainable Knowledge Society Concept through a Multi-dimensional Scorecard. In: Lytras, M.D., Ordonez de Pablos, P., Damiani, E., Avison, D., Naeve, A., Horner, D.G. (eds) Best Practices for the Knowledge Society. Knowledge, Learning, Development and Technology for All. WSKS 2009. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 49. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04757-2_35
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04757-2_35
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04756-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04757-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)