Any system for giving good advice has to maintain a tension between telling the truth and not being heard, on the one hand, and telling what can be heard but is not true, on the other. In such a system, the role of academic researchers is not so much to give advice as it is to generate knowledge and to provide critical commentary on advice that is given. Along the way, an academic tries to counteract the natural tendency of advice givers to become more attentive to the hearing of their clients than to the knowledge underlying what they say. This book is in that tradition. It honors the noble tradition of giving advice on strategic management and organizational learning by exploring some elements of fundamental knowledge that might inform such advice.
