Exploring Structuration in Knowledge Organization: Implications for Managing the Tension Between Stability and Dynamism

This paper builds on numerous suggestions of the need for a theoretical basis for knowledge organization from the point of view of interest, concern, or problem (e.g., domain, ecology, use environment, or language game). This is accomplished by first developing a possible theoretical understanding of why knowledge organization schemes tend toward stability through structuration and autopoiesis. In understanding this tendency, the possibility of promoting (desirable) change is also considered through activity. Second, the paper considers the requirements for the contextualization provided by such mappings. Finally, the case of the Internet is briefly explored. All of this provides a recipe a theory for practice ‘stew,’ which would highlight the possibility that just as structures (e.g., classification schemes) enable actions (e.g., information retrieval, knowledge transfer), actions enable structures. For this theoretical stew to influence practice, rules and resources— the structures of a knowledge organization scheme or system— must both support self-reflection and needs for consistency and adaptability. The virtuality of the developing electronic information world suggests the possibility of both coexisting through, for instance, mappings or crosswalks.