SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW

4.4 Important aspects
As cooperation is a vast and somewhat undefined subject it is important to focus on
decisive aspects. From a theoretical standpoint some guidance can be found in Brunsson
(2002). Brunsson is known for his way of simplifying processes in organisations to
only three stages: Talk, Decisions and Action (see Figure 2).
In the SDI world information policies, national strategies, and plans should be categorised
as ‘Talk’ according to Brunsson. ‘Talk’ should then be followed by ‘Decisions’
then concrete ‘Action’. This is what is supposed to happen in large projects and political
processes. According to Brunsson there is no straight line from talk to action. Instead
these three stages tend to live there own ‘life’. Things circulate and happen
within each stage but there is little communication between them. There is of course
some communication top-down, but not so much as is generally believed and there is
certainly not much communication bottom-up. Communication between these layers in
the process is generally rare.
Figure 2: Talk, decisions and action are generally not compatible but worlds of their own
(Brunsson, 2002).
Talk
Decisions
Action
For SDI in particular cooperation should take place in all three layers and also exist
between the layers (see Figure 3). In the ‘Talk’ layer there are already many people
working with strategies, plans and policies and doing valuable research where even
aspects of cooperation are handled. In the ‘decision’ layer there is a lot to gain from
organisational research and experience. In the ‘action’ layer, however, it seems that
the actual process when people meet (what is happening in their minds and what is the
outcome) is not particularly well studied and evaluated in terms of cooperation. It would
also be interesting to see if cooperation or at least communication between the layers
‘decision’ and ‘action’ can be improved.
Referring to the periods 1, 2 and (perhaps) 3 a trend where cooperation seems to be a
concept affecting organisations and people engaged in questions of SDI in more
‘depth’ can be seen. In addition, problems of ‘data sharing’ and general agreements
between the managements of different organisations have changed to practical daily
cooperation in the running of national SDIs. Using Brunssons terminology this is a development
from ‘Talk’ to ‘Action’.
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