Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Intellectual Capital

Eckhard Ammann
section 2. They are visualized in <strong>the</strong> IC space. The kind <strong>of</strong> visualization in both cases is inspired by
<strong>the</strong> visualization <strong>of</strong> social learning cycles in <strong>the</strong> so-called Information Space by Boisot (see Boisot
1999).
4.1 Scenario <strong>of</strong> a symmetric concatenation
As explained in section 3.2.2 symmetric concatenations lead to closed paths through <strong>the</strong> IC Space in
a way, that a first phase <strong>of</strong> breaking down consists <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> subsequent application <strong>of</strong> downward
operators and a second phase reverts this path by appropriate application <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> inverse upward
operators.
Our scenario will be <strong>the</strong> following: The level <strong>of</strong> communication (exchange <strong>of</strong> knowledge) should be
improved among <strong>the</strong> employees <strong>of</strong> a certain business unit within <strong>the</strong> company. This improvement can
be done on <strong>the</strong> operational level with <strong>the</strong> help <strong>of</strong> appropriate knowledge management activities.
Having performed <strong>the</strong>se activities, <strong>the</strong> company would like to see an observable improvement in its
overall intellectual capital statement (more specific, in <strong>the</strong> human capital domain part <strong>of</strong> this
statement). We can model this scenario with <strong>the</strong> symmetric concatenation
Ref -> Res -> Ind -> Gen -> Enl -> Coa ( == id).
A visualization <strong>of</strong> this symmetric path through <strong>the</strong> IC space is given in Figure 3. It starts and ends at
<strong>the</strong> IC origin.
Figure 3: A symmetric path
Applying <strong>the</strong> first operator in this concatenation, we refine our viewpoint from <strong>the</strong> IC origin to <strong>the</strong>
variable “Communication (exchange <strong>of</strong> knowledge) in <strong>the</strong> element “Capacities” <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> human capital
domain. Here <strong>the</strong> concepts <strong>of</strong> domains, elements and variables are taken from our IC reference
model, <strong>the</strong> Intellectus Model. The subsequent restriction focuses on <strong>the</strong> business unit <strong>of</strong> interest
within <strong>the</strong> company, while <strong>the</strong> following individualization views at <strong>the</strong> exchange <strong>of</strong> knowledge
behaviour <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> single employees in this business unit. Having improved <strong>the</strong>se behaviours through
application <strong>of</strong> knowledge management activities, we step up <strong>the</strong> path again by first generalize to <strong>the</strong>
group <strong>of</strong> employees in this business unit, <strong>the</strong>n enlarge to <strong>the</strong> company-wide viewpoint <strong>of</strong> human
capital and finally coarse to <strong>the</strong> improved and developed new intellectual capital statement <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
whole company.
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