What do we mean by ‘proof’ in business?

The guiding purpose of this blog is to explore and discuss issues related to the practice of business analytics, diagnostics, and forecasting in large, complex organizations.  The unique perspective here is to blend both management theory and technical methods in order better to serve active practitioners, be they managers, consultants, or advanced analytics technical experts.

The background context is to explore and record state-of-the-art thinking concerning tactical and strategic decision making processes in the context of complex institutions as multi-layered ‘sense-making organisms’, themselves situated in environments of dramatic change (political, economic, sociological, technological, legal, environmental, competitive, and demographic).  The subtext concerns itself with how how ‘truth’ and ‘proof’ propositions are established and operationalized in complex organizations.

For the practitioner, the nature of ‘truth’ in business is not simply scientific proof nor exclusively abstract theory-based, but bears upon living information in the the context of organizations as complex social structures.  The nature of ‘truth’ assertions in such settings are dynamic, multi-faceted and often paradoxical: as complex market and competitive factors shift, so is the organization constantly in the process of either re-asserting existing processes or challenging and changing old modes of thinking, the two often in a constant dynamic tension.

In terms of authorship, my name is Scott Mongeau (http://www.linkedin.com/in/smongeau) of SARK7 (http://www.sark7.com/).  Notably, I am also a part-time PhD candidate at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands (http://www.nyenrode.com/), focusing on business anlaytics from an organizational management perspective.  My posts here thus tackle practitioner issues framed in terms of both active analytics consulting work and active research.