Exploiting tacit knowledge through knowledge management technologies

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contributions and suitability of the available knowledge management (KM) technologies, including the Web 2.0 for exploiting tacit knowledge. It proposes an integrated framework for extracting tacit knowledge in organisations, which includes Web 2.0 technologies, KM tools, organisational learning (OL) and Community of Practice (CoP). It reviews a comprehensive literature covering overview of KM theories, KM technologies and OL and identifies the current state of knowledge relating to tacit knowledge exploitation. The outcomes of the paper indicate that Internet and Web 2.0 technologies have stunning prospects for creating learning communities where tacit knowledge can be extracted from people. The author recommends that organisations should design procedures and embed them in their Web 2.0 collaborative platforms persuading employees to record their ideas and share them with other members. It is also recommended that no idea should be taken for granted in a learning community where tacit knowledge exploitation is pursued. It is envisaged that future research should adopt empirical approach involving Complex Adaptive Model for Tacit Knowledge Exploitation (CAMTaKE) and the Theory of Deferred Action in examining the effectiveness of KM technologies including Web 2.0 tools for tacit knowledge exploitation

Distinguishing Knowledge from Information. A Prerequisite for Elaborating KM Initiative Strategy.

Although the technological approach of Knowledge Management (KM) is greatly shared, without awareness, when elaborating KM initiative’s strategy, we can confuse the notions of information and knowledge, and disregard the importance of individual’s tacit knowledge used in action. Therefore, to avoid misunderstanding during the strategic orientation phase of a general KM initiative development, it is fundamental to clearly distinguish the notion of information from the notion of knowledge. Further, we insist on the importance to integrate the individual as a component of the Enterprise’s Information and Knowledge System (EIKS). In this paper, we argue that Knowledge cannot be considered as an object such as data are in digital information systems. Consequently, we propose an empirical model enabling to distinguish the notions of information and knowledge. This model shows the role of individual’s interpretative frameworks and tacit knowledge, establishing a discontinuity between information and knowledge. This pragmatic vision needs thinking about the architecture of an Enterprise’s Information and Knowledge System (EIKS), which must be a basis of discussion during the strategic orientation phase of a KM initiative.Information; Enterprise’s Information and Knowledge System (EIKS); KM initiative strategy; Commensurability of Individual’s Interpretative Frameworks; Individual’s tacit knowledge; Knowledge; Knowledge Management (KM);

Tacit Knowledge Sharing Behavior, Within A Relational Social Capital Framework, In A South African University Of Technology

The sharing of tacit knowledge is an important influence on the development of intellectual capital in a University of Technology but whereas its effects are clear in a business context, they have been absent from studies in the context of higher education.This study integrated relational social capital and reasoned action theory to construct a model for investigating factors that predict an individual’s intention to share tacit knowledge.  Specifically, it examined the relationship between relational social capital in terms of trust (affect and cognitive-based trust), shared norms and values (including social norms and norms of social support and reciprocity) and the individual’s attitude towards sharing tacit knowledge.  It further examined the relationship between the individual’s attitude, their perceived norms and perceived behavioral control over the sharing of tacit knowledge and their intention to share tacit knowledge.A hypothesized, theoretical model of the individual’s intention to share tacit knowledge was developed.  This model was found to be a poor fit to the data and an alternative model was developed which was found to be a good fit to the data.  This study incorporated nine research interviews and five hundred and fifty four questionnaires. Relational social capital was found to be significant for predicting individuals’ intentions to share tacit knowledge but the reasoned action variables were found to be less significant, particularly perceived behavioral control over the sharing of tacit knowledge, indicating the need for further research

An Analysis Of Structural Social Capital And The Individual’s Intention To Share Tacit Knowledge Using Reasoned Action Theory

The sharing of tacit knowledge is important and its relationship with the development of social capital in a University of Technology is critical in the construction of a model to support and promote appropriate tacit knowledge sharing behavior. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between structural social capital and reasoned action theory and the individual’s intention to share tacit knowledge.  Structural social capital incorporates strong network ties and a high level of network resources.  Specifically, the study examined the relationship strong network ties and a high level of network resources and the individual’s attitude towards sharing tacit knowledge.  It further examined the relationship between the individual’s attitude towards tacit knowledge sharing, their perceived norms about tacit knowledge sharing and their intention to share tacit knowledge. The research design was a case study incorporating quantitative research (five hundred and ninety questionnaires).  A model of the individual’s intention to share tacit knowledge was developed and evaluated using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that structural social capital positively affects an individual’s attitude towards tacit knowledge sharing and that the individual’s attitude towards tacit knowledge sharing positively affects their intention to share tacit knowledge

Nonaka's theory of knowledge creation to convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge : a study of AIDS Saskatoon

AIDS Saskatoon (AS), a non-profit organization, has limited funding. Most of the funding and resources for the organization go into service provision and education/prevention activities, leaving little time for strategic planning. Essentially, organizational knowledge exists at an individual level, which causes concern in terms of sustainability, continuity, evaluation, raising funding, writing research proposals, and staff training. AS’ operations are largely based on tacit knowledge, or knowledge that resides within individuals, and little of it is explicit knowledge, or knowledge that can be examined by and shared with others. This problem yields the following research question: How does AIDS Saskatoon convert their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge? This research study examines AS’ tacit knowledge and represents it in an explicit format with the combination of thematic analysis and an organizational model. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) method is employed to gather and analyze qualitative data. The thematic analysis reveals the mental models and beliefs that are taken for granted at AS and therefore no longer articulated among the participants but simply a part of their daily practice. A metaphorical model of AS, using Nonaka’s theory of knowledge creation as a theoretical basis, is presented to convey some of the tacit knowledge that cannot be captured in words. AS has had some challenges in their explicit knowledge documentation. This research takes one piece of their tacit knowledge and represents it explicitly through themes and image: themes articulated tacit knowledge at AS in an explicit format, and the organizational model framed the knowledge by using metaphor. An important implication of this research for the larger body of knowledge management literature is that the overarching concepts in Nonaka’s theory of knowledge creation were applicable for a community-based organization, where most Knowledge Management literature has focused on for-profit contexts

Tuning in on tacit knowledge.

Tuning in on teaching practice in any discipline may well run up against a problem of tacit knowledge--knowledge crucial to the discipline’s ways of thinking and practicing, but by nature obscure. Teachers who omit to make their tacit knowledge explicit in the classroom cause learning bottlenecks for their students. Tacit knowledge can be made explicit to its teacher owner, with positive effect on her teaching, in an interview that invites her to address how she thinks and practices in work her students, lacking her tacit knowledge, find impossible to master (Middendorf & Pace, 2004). We have conducted half a dozen such 90-minute to two-hour interviews with university teachers in different disciplines. We present qualitative analyses of those interviews which find across disciplines common themes and elements in teachers’ tacit knowledge and common impacts on teachers’ practice and thinking when tacit knowledge becomes explicit. Quoting from our interviews, we show through different analytical lenses, including phenomenology and narrative identity theory, how teachers regardless of discipline gravitate to intrinsically hermeneutic understandings of their disciplines, instinctively value provisionality of judgment, assume crucial disciplinary relationships of parts to wholes, embody in Heideggerian terms their ways of thinking and practicing (Van Manen, 1990), implicitly trust key disciplinary processes, willingly inhabit liminal spaces and, in recalling how they came to the understandings their students find so difficult to master, surface crucial aspects of their professional identities. We seek discussion with our audience of the effects on teaching and learning of unearthing and variously analyzing tacit knowledge across many disciplines. Middendorf, J. & Pace, D. (2004). Decoding the disciplines: A model for helping students learn disciplinary ways of thinking. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2004(98), 1-12. Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany, NY: State of New York Press

Travels with the Flying Dutchman: marketing managers, marketing planning and the metaphors of practice

A review of the literature on strategic marketing planning reveals that the manner in which it is carried out in practice does not appear to reflect the way in which it is written about in texts. It is also clear that the exploration of marketing processes in organisations is seriously neglected from a phenomenological perspective. In order to explore this area, and the lived reality of planning from marketing managers perspectives, a research methodology was adopted using the phenomenological interview. A key research question focused investigation on determining what successful marketing decision making expertise actually consists of, if it is not about the explicit skills and knowledge embedded in the rational technical model of planning. The subsequent phenomenological analysis of the interviews demonstrated that the complexity of marketing planning and individual action cannot be collapsed into a textual model. What managers drew on was a qualitative, locally constructed knowledge base. Marketing decision making and action was found to be based within a locally enacted hermeneutical circle of talk, relationships, tacit knowledge and emergent issues, where the plans they wrote acted as cues to action rather than as prescriptive guides. Based on these findings, a revised theoretical framework is proposed for understanding marketing planning. This framework draws on the socially constructed metaphors used by the marketing managers in this study to explain their practical activity. It is argued that this theoretical approach offers up ideas for action to other marketers, rather than prescriptions. It also indicates that much marketing activity is successful yet diverse, both in form and style

Tacit knowing, moral development and pluralism: thoughts on mentoring, judgment and reform

The epistemology of tacit knowing in the ethics of mentoring is meant to be grounding for intelligent action. The structural and functional models delineated above provide a conceptual map for such action. The structure of tacit knowing consists of subsidiary awareness and focal awareness and the two poles of from-to knowing. Subsidiary awareness is on the internal (personal) pole, focal awareness is on the external (objective) pole. The function of tacit knowing has three aspects: selective, heuristic and persuasive, each having a conative and cognitive mode or trait. The driving force of this model is “intellectual passion” which in ethics is the judicial attitude, keeping the principle of justice in sight. Since the epistemology of tacit knowing presupposes free will, it must choose a duty bound ethics2. Specifically, the analysis of tacit knowing model presented here hones the awareness of the adult about his own processes of knowing, doing and persuasive acts, deliberately focusing on these processes and their grounding in free will. The adult’s understanding then serves his nurturing function, the training of the young to attain awareness of these same functions in him. The ethical aspect is the duty to pass on this knowledge to enable the child to become intelligently autonomous, to train him to develop the judicial attitude. Thus, both the morality of traits, that is being, and the morality of principles, that is doing, are fostered. However, the key is the fostering of the will to do right, that is fostering the “intellectual passion” grounded in the judicial attitude

Development of Adult Thinking : Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cognitive Development and Adult Learning

This chapter elaborates the manifold characteristics of tacit knowledge and knowing in the construction of expertise. Expertise and tacit knowledge in various fields and professions have several characteristics that are closely intertwined. The chapter considers tacit knowledge in relation to skills and competences as well as in relation to the questions of explication and argumentation. Furthermore, the process and product aspects of tacit knowledge as well as individual and collective aspects are brought into discussion. This analysis leads to the presentation of a model in which the characteristics of tacit knowledge and expertise are intertwined into four different perspectives. Along with these four perspectives, the chapter touches upon current research in which the development of expertise is understood as a collective process combining individuals, communities, and the objects of their activities. Although tacit knowledge and knowing are difficult to explicate, they are closely intertwined with cognitive and emotional aspects in experts’ thinking and action – and it may be possible to analyse and examine them in greater detail.</p

The dynamics of communication - Explicit knowledge is like an island surrounded and supported by the tacit knowledge sea

Over the last quarter of a century it has been established that knowledge sharing provides a critical competitive advantage. Polanyi (1978) stated tacit knowledge is a form of knowledge that, people carry knowledge in their minds. Drucker (1993) stated that knowledge would become an essential and critical asset/resource in organisations. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) knowledge spiral explored the relationship between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Wenger’s study at Chrysler (1999) illustrated how collaboration was a vital component in informal learning situations, Wenger‘s community of practice is structural model, that contains: a domain (place) a common ground; a community which creates the social fabric of learning; and the practice, a set of frameworks. The conversion and fusion of tacit knowledge is crafted through action, reflection and emotional involvement (Johannessen 2011). This study aims to examine how electrical engineers share tacit knowledge on location/worksites through; experience, observation, imitation and practice. This transfer of information, intelligence, evidence and knowledge is meaningless without shared experience and socialisation. The sharing of tacit knowledge enables engineers to acquire and interpret new information and then to construct valuable solutions to solve problems/innovation. By extracting this tacit knowledge an engineering organisation can be innovative by drawing up the collective resourcefulness and initiative of the engineers