CURRENT INTEREST MAP, NOVEMBER 2001.

Interest Map shows topics I am interested in and their interconnections.

They can be summarized by one question: "How to create a world where individual abilities, and ability to think first of all, can develop to their fullest potential and will be utilized for common good" The world consists from societies, societies from organizations and institutions, organizations and institutions from teams, and teams from individuals. Thus my interests span all these levels and will expand when humankind gets in touch with other intelligent life existing in the universe. Or when we start to deal with computers as with humans.

I will dig in at any location on the map, if favorable conditions emerge. So far I am focusing on the small group level. Studying collaborative problem solving in co-acting teams I become more and more concerned that teams are often used in order to replace best individual thinkers. That should be less productive than involving outstanding individuals in collaborative problem solving. Yet this option is not considered. For some reasons, people of outstanding analytic abilities do not easily work well in groups. Instead of trying to figure out why, companies chose to use groups of less capable people. Improvement of team problem-solving approaches becomes a means to reduce a need in exceptionally good thinkers. When not needed and not mixing well with co-workers, they have to go.

In my dissertation study I try to figure out why exceptionally analytic people do not perform well in a team and what can be done to integrate them in collaborative problem solving.

My methodological interests stem from my preference for action research exemplified in work of Kurt Lewin and Brunno Bettelheim, which was continued and recently described by Chris Argyris (1985) and Edgar Schein (1987, 1988). Personally, I find that at the present stage of development of social sciences their theoretical foundation is not strong enough to direct my research or to evaluate its quality. For this reason in my studies I need a close link with practically important tasks.

I have searched through many approaches to examination of social phenomena which seemed well positioned for meaningful mathematical modeling. System dynamics approach (Morecroft and Sterman 1994) to problem solving in small groups seems most promising to me so far.

References

Argyris, Chris, Robert Putnam, and Diana Smith. 1985. Action Science : Concepts, Methods, and Skills for Research and Intervention San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass

Morecroft, John and John Sterman. 1994. Modeling for Learning Organizations Portland, OR: Productivity Press

Schein, Edgar. 1987. Process consultation. Vol. 2 Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley

Schein, Edgar. 1988. Process consultation. Vol. 1 (Revised edition) Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley