The role of tacit knowledge in the construction industry: towards a definition

The construction industry is perceived as one of the knowledge-based value creating sectors of the economy; however, it faces many challenges, especially in terms of performance, due to its intrinsic nature. Different knowledge-based solutions have been proposed in the past to overcome this problem. However, the process-based solutions, enhancing personalisation strategies and interactions between construction workers to generate and share tacit knowledge, would be much more relevant to overcome KM problems in construction organisations. As the initial step towards the management of tacit knowledge, this paper examines the nature and importance of tacit knowledge in the construction industry. Based on research findings a definition for tacit knowledge is synthesised to: understanding, capabilities, skills and the experiences of individuals; often expressed in human actions in the form of thoughts, points of view, evaluation and advice; generated and acquired through past experiences, individuals, and repositories; utilised for the benefit of individual and organisational development

The case for the development of novel human skills capture methodologies

As the capabilities of industrial automation are growing, so is the ability to supplement or replace the more tacit, cognitive skills of manual operators. Whilst models have been published within the human factors literature regarding automation implementation, they neglect to discuss the initial capture of the task and automation experts currently lack a formal tool to assess feasibility. The definition of what is meant by "human skill" is discussed and three crucial theoretical underpinnings are proposed for a novel, automation-specific skill capture methodology: emphasis upon procedural rules, emphasis upon action-facilitating factors and taxonomy of skill

A Post-Critical Science of Administration: Toward a Society of Explorers

What is meant by science and whether it is an appropriate model for public administration has been a subject of debate since Woodrow Wilson called for a science of administration in 1887. This dissertation introduces another voice into that debate, the voice of a world-renowned physical chemist named Michael Polanyi. Polanyi\u27s sharp criticism of positivism reinforces the arguments of those questioning the legitimacy of an administrative science, but instead of rejecting it, he constructed an alternative definition of science that recognizes the indeterminacy of reality, the personal nature of knowledge, and the centrality of the logic of tacit knowing. Because all knowledge is tacit or rooted in tacit knowing, we can know more than we can tell, and tacit knowing becomes evident in the dynamic order of polycentric entities and in their reliance on tradition and the person, constrained by community, and morally responsible for discovery and practice

A Post-Critical Science of Administration: Toward a Society of Explorers

What is meant by science and whether it is an appropriate model for public administration has been a subject of debate since Woodrow Wilson called for a science of administration in 1887. This dissertation introduces another voice into that debate, the voice of a world-renowned physical chemist named Michael Polanyi. Polanyi\u27s sharp criticism of positivism reinforces the arguments of those questioning the legitimacy of an administrative science, but instead of rejecting it, he constructed an alternative definition of science that recognizes the indeterminacy of reality, the personal nature of knowledge, and the centrality of the logic of tacit knowing. Because all knowledge is tacit or rooted in tacit knowing, we can know more than we can tell, and tacit knowing becomes evident in the dynamic order of polycentric entities and in their reliance on tradition and the person, constrained by community, and morally responsible for discovery and practice

An investigation of the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge in software development teams

Knowledge in general, and tacit knowledge in particular, has been hailed as an important factor for successful performance in knowledge-worker teams. Despite claims of the importance of tacit knowledge, few researchers have studied the concept empirically, due in part to the confusion surrounding its conceptualisation. The present study examined the acquisition and sharing o f tacit knowledge and the consequent effect on team performance, through social interaction and the development of a transactive memory system (TMS). TMSs are important for the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge, since they enact ‘collective minds’ of teams, and are also a factor in successful team performance. In order to conduct this research, a team-level operational definition of tacit knowledge was forwarded and a direct measure of tacit knowledge for software development teams, called the Team Tacit Knowledge Measure (TTKM ) was developed and validated. To investigate the main premise of this research an empirical survey study was conducted which involved 48 software development teams (n = 181 individuals), from Ireland and the UK. Software developers were chosen as the example of knowledge-worker teams because they work with intangible cognitive processes. It was concluded that tacit knowledge was acquired and shared directly through good quality social interactions and through the development of a TMS. Quality of social interaction was found to be a more important route through which teams can learn and share tacit knowledge, than was transactive memory. However, transactive memory was not a mediator between social interaction and team tacit knowledge, indicating that both provided separate contributions. Team tacit knowledge was found to predict team performance above and beyond transactive memory, though both were significant. Based on these findings recommendations were made for the management of software development teams and for future research directions

Towards a Definition of Efforts

Although widely used across psychology, economics, and philosophy, the concept ofeffort is rarely ever defined. This article argues that the time is ripe to look for anexplicit general definition of effort, makes some proposals about how to arrive at thisdefinition, and suggests that a force-based approach is the most promising. Section 1presents an interdisciplinary overview of some chief research axes on effort, and arguesthat few, if any, general definitions have been proposed so far. Section 2 argues thatsuch a definition is now needed and proposes a basic methodology to arrive at it, whosefirst step is to make explicit the various tacit assumptions about effort made acrosssciences and ordinary thinking. Section 3 unearths 4 different conceptions of effortfrom research on effort so far:primitive-feelings accounts,comparator-based accounts,resource-based accountsandforce-based accounts. It is then argued that the first 2kinds of accounts, although interesting in their own right, are not strictly speaking abouteffort. Section 4 considers the 2 most promising general approaches to efforts: re-source-based and force-based accounts. It argues that these accounts are not only compatible but actually extensionally equivalent. This notwithstanding, it explains why force-based accounts should be regarded as more fundamental than resource-basedaccount

Tacit knowledge externalization among geographically distributed small groups

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology.Currently, organizations are shifting their activities and processes from information-based to knowledge-based as a result of the emergence of organizational knowledge as the main, if not the only, competitive advantage between rival organizations. Accordingly, the management of what an organization knows and the activities of knowledge externalization, which incorporates creation, articulation, capture, transformation, nurture, and retention, as well as knowledge measurement has become a field of serious research. Two main obstacles have emerged as a result. One is associated with the definition of knowledge, and the second is whether in fact knowledge in general and tacit knowledge in particular can be managed, externalized and measured. The literature does not provide a universal knowledge definition. Accordingly, knowledge is defined contextually by both researchers and organizations. As a result, researchers and organizations work to manage knowledge, externalize it and measure it dependent on how they define it or on available definitions. Fortunately, the majority of researchers agree that knowledge is a duality, namely, tacit and explicit, and that its management should encompass both. Explicit knowledge management proved to be easy and successful because of its information-like nature and also because it could be implemented using existing information-based concepts and tools. In contrast, work on managing tacit knowledge proved to be difficult and unsuccessful because of the illusive nature of this type of knowledge, and because its capture and transformation in its entirety is extremely difficult, if not impossible. In addition, the majority of the literary work on knowledge externalization and measurement is associated with face-to-face interactions between individuals. Similar work which addresses the externalization and measurement of tacit knowledge among geographically distributed individuals is very limited if not non-existent. This dissertation identifies the difficulties associated with managing tacit knowledge in its entirety among distributed individuals and proposes its categorization into types/kinds as a solution for its effective externalization and measurement. The categorization process implies the identification of those types or kinds of tacit knowledge which could be externalized and measured easier than others. This is in line with most researchers' beliefs; that there are parts of tacit knowledge which cannot be externalized and measured, such as intuitions, feelings, instincts, expertise and such. The parts which can be externalized and measured based on observations, learning, and experimentation are expertise, know-how and the like; while the parts which can be externalized and measured if articulated and nurtured are opinions, ideas and similar The thesis, drawing upon Hevner's design theory, develops an artifact for the effective capture and transformation of categorized types of tacit knowledge among distributed small groups. It proposes opinions and ideas as types of tacit knowledge which can easily be externalized and measured among distributed individuals. It introduces concepts regarding how to nurture articulated opinions and ideas among such individuals. It also proposes an externalization process, as an amendment of Nonaka and Takeouchi's 1995 face-to-face process, which identifies the stages of the externalization of the types in distributed environments. The dissertation is organized into two main tasks. Firstly, an elaborate literature review, which paves the ground for the introduced methodology, is undertaken. Secondly, an experiment was conducted on small groups of students who used a developed example tool for their distributed cooperation and opinions and ideas externalization. The dissertation's methodology identifies four essential steps for the externalization and measurement of tacit knowledge. The experiment, which was based on Sarker's (2004) experimental guidelines, encompasses the use of a developed example tool by the students

Natural Language Tutoring and the Novice Programmer

For beginning programmers, inadequate problem solving and planning skills are among the most salient of their weaknesses. Novices, by definition, lack much of the tacit knowledge that underlies effective programming. This dissertation examines the efficacy of natural language tutoring (NLT) to foster acquisition of this tacit knowledge. Coached Program Planning (CPP) is proposed as a solution to the problem of teaching the tacit knowledge of programming. The general aim is to cultivate the development of such knowledge by eliciting and scaffolding the problem solving and planning activities that novices are known to underestimate or bypass altogether. ProPL (pro-PELL), a dialogue-based intelligent tutoring system based on CPP, is also described. In an evaluation, the primary findings were that students who received tutoring from ProPL seemed to exhibit an improved ability compose plans and displayed behaviors suggestive of thinking at greater levels of abstraction than students in a read-only control group. The major finding is that NLT appears to be effective in teaching program composition skills