The state is, moreover, based upon two potent forces, the legislative and the executive ... The focal centre of the ... legislative is the learned--and if this latter great support and pillar should prove defective, how is it conceivable that the state should stand? In view of the fact that at the present time such fully developed and comprehensively learned individuals are hard to come by, and the government and people are in dire need of order and direction, it is essential to establish a body of scholars the various groups of whose membership would each be expert in one of the aforementioned branches of knowledge. This body should with the greatest energy and vigour deliberate as to all present and future requirements, and bring about equilibrium and order.(1)

Introduction Almost all large, international organisations ranging from PepsiCo to the United Nations to the Catholic Church, are struggling with the challenge of generating, managing and sharing truly useful knowledge. In the field of organisational development, the ability to capture, organise and distribute experiential knowledge is seen as one of the critical foundations for a learning organisation.(2) This challenge is certainly being felt in the Bahá'í community, where the diffuse network of Bahá'í communities is linked only through administrative organisations. Nobody has access to all the knowledge available, yet each believer needs and wants to know what has already been done, which parts are causing problems, and what successes can be replicated. In order for knowledge sharing and generation to take place more easily, some sort of knowledge management system that is easily accessible is vital. This paper will attempt to lay out some ideas about a knowledge management system focussed on assisting individuals, communities and institutions in generating and sharing experiences and insights that will help them be more successful in their activities. My focus is on experiential and practical knowledge rather than academic scholarship.

Knowledge in the Bahá'í community The need for a more systematic and organised process of knowledge generation and sharing in the Bahá'í community is critical to its continuing evolution. When you consider situations where knowledge sharing can dramatically improve the success rate of Bahá'í activities the examples are many: A Bahá'í wants to set up a school for infants and would like to build on the experiences of communities facing similar socio-economic challenges An Institute is tasked with the development of a new believer deepening program, and would like to access other curricula in addition to understanding the key success factors of their organisation A community is having a problem with backbiting and would like to find out about innovative solutions that have been developed elsewhere A mid-sized community is concerned about its low level of participation and wants to know what actions have worked in other communities The feast has been identified as a major area of improvement for a city and the community needs help in developing new approaches The Local Spiritual Assembly (LSA) is confronted with a case of sexual abuse in the community and would like to know how other LSA's handled similar situations An LSA would like practical advice on how to deal with a young Bahá'í who is breaking the alcohol law, without causing his further estrangement A group is planning a proclamation to local religious leaders and would like to know how to tailor their approach The National Spiritual Assembly (NSA) wants to distribute updates of the LSA manual Regional committees want to share different experiences in conducting unit conventions. Because of the lack of an organising system and access to such a system, Bahá'ís often end up "reinventing the wheel" or repeating the same mistakes that other communities have already made and painstakingly learned from. Successful experiences are also rarely replicated because information about them is not in a form that allows adaptation to other situations. Even in formal Bahá'í scholarship little is built on the work of others. A recent analysis of citation rates for Bahá'í articles found a surprisingly low rate that led the report's authors to suggest that it might be "related to the lack of an index to Bahá'í periodical materials and the difficulty of obtaining such periodicals."(3) The reason for this situation is understandable. The mechanisms for widespread knowledge dispersal occur primarily at selected conferences and in national publications. At present there are few places or institutions that systematically capture knowledge except on an individual basis. The knowledge that is collected is rarely systematically organised and even when it is organised it can rarely be accessed by more than a handful of individuals. As a result there is limited awareness about the knowledge resources that are available in the Bahá'í community. The technology for knowledge generation and sharing, however, is becoming increasingly available as the electronic networking explodes and computers lower their costs. Just as computerisation of the Bahá'í Writings revolutionised the way Bahá'ís could access the Writings, the Internet (or a Bahá'í Intranet) could revolutionise the way knowledge is generated and shared in the Faith.

Existing knowledge systems One model system that currently functions extremely well is the "Professional Development" system developed by McKinsey & Co., a premier international management consulting firm. This system was developed in the 1980's when McKinsey found itself falling behind its competitors in the development of new knowledge. In order to rectify this situation, a simple matrix was created, whose axes were industry group and business function was created. For each industry group and function a "practice leadership group" was created which was responsible for knowledge generation and sharing. As a result of this organisation each box within the matrix was claimed by a small group of consultants that not only pushed their thinking in that specific area, but then could relate it to whatever was going on in the rest of organisation. The network is easily accessible from anywhere in the world by computer so that if someone has to comment on the latest development in mining finance they know where to go. The first step in any McKinsey study is to query the Professional Development network and call up the practice leaders to find out the latest knowledge developments. The factors associated with the success of this and other knowledge management systems include: Complete support from senior management Simplicity and understandability The formation and development of communities of practice Dedicated resources to keep a knowledge base up to date Balance of top-driven structure and bottom up needs

	Finance	Marketing	Information Systems	Strategy	Organisational Performance	Etcetera
Banking
Manufacturing
Retail
Forest products
Chemicals
Mining
Et cetera

In order to develop its own knowledge management system the Bahá'í community must tackle four related issues: Ownership/oversight Classification Generation and collection Access and dissemination Ownership Although there are a number of potential coordinators of this knowledge management system, an obvious choice is the Institution of the Learned. Members of this institution are continually called on to bring knowledge and understanding to bear on local situations. They are also the ones who have the greatest access to the knowledge being generated at the community level. Just think of the power of having all Auxiliary Board members (ABMs) linked together via the Internet and developing an evolving database of experience that is easily accessible. The World Centre and various NSAs could also be "owners" of this management system. Whoever the coordinators are, high priority must be given to the vexing issues of security, access, and review protocols to ensure quality. Possible classification systems Knowledge classification systems are not just an outgrowth of a sound scientific method. Rather, they are a prerequisite for it because they directly affect the investigator's ability to carry out the steps needed for the development of high quality knowledge. The history of science shows that the functional side of many disciplines did not make rapid progress until a basic classification system was completed. Chemistry made little progress until Mendeleev worked out his periodic table of the elements, and biology would still be in its infancy if taxonomic studies had not laid the groundwork for functional research. Although the classification systems mentioned above have been very extensive in their scope, systems do not have to be universal to be of use. A range of classification systems directed toward specific functional purposes have been widely used in most sciences and they have often been precursors to more universal classification systems. The question before us is what matrix (or functional taxonomy) is appropriate for a Bahá'í knowledge management system. The challenge is to build a skeleton that is flexible enough to allow for expansion in all directions. With the careful selection of indexing categories (and the provision for additional categories and entries) we can develop a system that is a learning system, responsive to its own use. Developing a system that anticipates all additions is simply not feasible. With the Internet's capacity for linking, the categories themselves and their relationships can be much more open as cross referencing becomes almost automatic. Eventually even the "heading" categories can be changed without too much trouble. A possible set of axes for a Bahá'í knowledge matrix (certainly not a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list) include: Activities (feast, committees, teaching, socio-economic development...) Issues (racism, women, agriculture...) Levels (individual, community, institution...) Functions Organisations (institutes, children's classes, community events, schools, etc.) Goals Spiritual Principles Geographical (communities, regions...) Complexity (introductory, advanced, language level...) Sources (Bahá'u'lláh, secondary Bahá'í authors, other authors...) The following description is one possible approach to creating a knowledge generating matrix. The critical question is: will it assist individuals, communities and institutions in sharing experiences and insights that will help them be more successful in their activities? This system is divided into three activity clusters--teaching, social and economic development, community life (other possible cluster could be individual, community and institution, etc.). The purpose of creating the matrix would be to share key success factors for various activities as well as share lessons learned when there have been challenges. Teaching (Axes: Activity by target segment) Youth Minorities Christians Atheists Hindus Etcetera Proclamations             External affairs              Materials              Firesides             Teaching             Projects             Opposition             Et cetera             Social and Economic Development (Axes: Area of discipline by function) Organisation Funding Systems Strategy Curriculum Outside Resources Agriculture             Health             Literacy             Race unity             Schools             Substance abuse             Et cetera             Community Life (Axes = Activity by resource/process) Organisation Innovative Initiatives Materials Evaluation Feast           Holy Days           Deepening           Centres           Institutes           Children's classes           Et cetera           Knowledge generation Many organisations have found that the power of knowledge management is only harnessed by creating informal networks of people who do the same or similar kinds of work--people who are often in different or geographically dispersed organisational units. These informal networks have been called the "community of practice." The human ties among such a community are often the part of the formula that is missed or misunderstood by simple knowledge management solutions, since practitioners who are exposed to the same class of problem often develop a sense of mutual obligation to help one another.(4) Knowledge and experience often do not fit neatly into data warehouses. The challenge for the system is to implement new flexible technologies that can adapt to different forms of data as well as to support and enable those communities of practice. The rush to various technological solutions (networking, groupware, video, data conferencing) have often been disappointing and more often than not, have generated endless unused discussion databases and minimally valuable internal Web sites. Information technologies must provide a way to form communities, not simply to provide communications. These communities will form and share knowledge on the basis of pull by individual members, not centralised push of information. However, in order to do this they must have the necessary tools to form, evolve, and develop as freely as possible. The primary purpose of the matrix structure proposed earlier would not just be to organise knowledge but, more fundamentally, to create "communities of practice" among the believers or the Institution of the Learned, who would then ensure that relevant knowledge was created and shared. Access and dissemination Although electronic access to information has until recently been confined to the technologically advanced nations, this is rapidly changing. It is expected that most countries in Africa, for example, will have full Internet access by mid-1997, and all regions of the planet will have access when two global satellite networks become operational in 2001 (Africa Online Internal Strategy Paper). The Internet is clearly the technology of choice. Issues of access (would just ABMs be able to have access), security (how do we protect privacy, avoid covenant breaking etc.) and review (how can quality be maintained without stifling individual initiative) remain to be resolved. Conclusion This paper is designed to stimulate discussion and begin exploration of a few promising directions. Many of the issues related to knowledge management within the Bahá'í community have been addressed by numerous people at various points in time. However given the current level of maturity in the Bahá'í community, the existence of powerful new technologies and the goals of the four year plan, the time may be right for a breakthrough in this area. After more discussion, a web-based pilot project to explore various system concepts may be viable. However, it the long term it will require significant resources and guidance. Ultimately it is up to the institutions of the Faith to decide whether this is an area in which the community needs to invest resources and energy.

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End Notes (Use [BACK] to return to article.) 'Abdu'l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilisation (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1990) 37. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: the Art & Practice of The Learning Organisation (New York: Doubleday Currency, 1990); Peter Kline and Bernard Saunders, Ten Steps to a Learning Organisation (Virginia: Great Ocean Publishers, 1993). Seena Fazel and John Danesh, "Bahá'í Scholarship: an examination using citation analysis," The Bahá'í Studies Review 5.1 (1995): 13-26. Brook Manville, "Harvest Your Workers' Knowledge," in Management Science (Oct. 1995): 70-75.

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