Hierarchy and anarchy : beyond the opposition between centralized and distributed organization?

Abstract

The article includes two parts. An historical perspective shows, firstly, that the coexistence of centralized and distributed organizations of knowledge is not new. Since the Western medieval to modern times, in fact, the information is processed in one way or the other depending on its nature and the value that the society assigns to it. An apparent interaction between hierarchy and anarchy results from this phenomenon which appears to be accelerating nowadays with the increasing development of information technology. However, this same technology can provide business solutions to control the generated uncertainty. Therefore, in a second part, the paper presents a temporal model to evaluate and to improve the quality of empirical information, whatever its mode of organization. The model is based on an hermeneutic approach and on a development of the database conceptual modelling theory. Several examples of application of the method are presented in the field of administrative databases and of cultural information systems.