The role of architectures in human resource management

Abstract

Architecture?, when understood in its broadest sense, refers to structured spaces in which we evolve individually and collectively. These spaces can be easily accessible to our senses (building architecture, space occupation), or partially perceived (language, money, social conventions, time...). In the first case we will refer to visible architectures and in the second case we will refer to invisible architectures.

These architectures are so present and pervasive that people are usually not aware of them and take them as the external reality that has always, and will always, shape the world.

We demonstrate that architecture plays a central role in collective intelligence, wisdom and consciousness (CIWC). The same architecture will trigger the same collective outcomes no matter what topics, issues, market places and players are in its center. A different architecture may empower or diminish the capability of a community to deal with these given topics, issues, market places, players. Not only architectures influence our capabilities, but they create new reality.

The planetary challenges addressed by humanity today are intimately related to the architecture in which they are formulated. Changing the architecture is likely to lead to new realities in which these challenges may be addressed totally differently, individually and collectively. In some cases the challenge may not even exist anymore, it was just a byproduct of the architecture.

The civilization of pyramidal collective intelligence has invented specific architectures for itself. Some are highly influenced by culture and local factors, others seem to be universal. Today any learning organization seeking to improve its collective intelligence, wisdom and consciousness should become highly aware of how architecture works, specially inside the different types of collective intelligence. People can be trained to detect which architectures are surrounding them and decide to design new ones that can empower them. They become architects rather than just being “architectured”. This is a whole new space opened to human resources, learning and cognitive science.