From the Information Units to the Collective Intelligence: a Viable Systems Perspective for Managing Knowledge in the Digital Era

Nowadays, the development of data management technologies has deeply contributed to make immediate and effective the activity of gathering and processing large amounts of data with reference to specific process or performance indicators. The Big Data phenomenon along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques represent a new era in information exploration and utilization, by offering new perspectives in the decision-making processes, especially in complex and fragmented situation. In this way, the emerging knowledge derived pushes toward new models of collective intelligence which can help to face the challenges that are affecting the current social context. In this direction, the paper, by adopting the interpretative lens offered by the Viable Systems Approach (vSa), proposes a conceptual model for managing collective knowledge based on big data and AI and for supporting decision-makers in complex contexts. The work is organized in four main sections. First of all, it opens with the analysis of the theoretical background of reference, highlighting the scientific evidence emerging from the literature dedicated to big data, artificial and the collective knowledge approaches. By adopting the concepts provided by the vSa, a new possible interpretative path is defined concerning managing knowledge in the digital era. In this regard, the Chinese case in facing up the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to collective intelligence approaches is presented. Finally, the potential implications of the work, both from a theoretical scientific and a practical-managerial point of view, are highlighted.