Tacit knowledge

About: Tacit knowledge is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8055 publications have been published within this topic receiving 302064 citations. The topic is also known as: implicit knowledge.

Bridging Epistemologies: the Generative Dance Between Organizational Knowledge and Organizational Knowing

Abstract: Much current work on organizational knowledge, intellectual capital, knowledge-creating organizations, knowledge work, and the like rests on a single, traditional understanding of the nature of knowledge. We call this understanding the "episte-mology of possession," since it treats knowledge as something people possess. Yet, this epistemology cannot account for the knowing found in individual and group practice. Knowing as action calls for an "epistemology of practice." Moreover, the epistemology of possession tends to privilege explicit over tacit knowledge, and knowledge possessed by individuals over that possessed by groups. Current work on organizations is limited by this privileging and by the scant attention given to knowing in its own right. Organizations are better understood if explicit, tacit, individual and group knowledge are treated as four distinct and coequal forms of knowledge (each doing work the others cannot), and if knowledge and knowing are seen as mutually enabling (not competing). We hold that knowledge is a tool of knowing, that knowing is an aspect of our interaction with the social and physical world, and that the interplay of knowledge and knowing can generate new knowledge and new ways of knowing. We believe this generative dance between knowledge and knowing is a powerful source of organizational innovation. Harnessing this innovation calls for organizational and technological infrastructures that support the interplay of knowledge and knowing. Ultimately, these concepts make possible a more robust framing of such epistemologically-centered concerns as core competencies, the management of intellectual capital, etc. We explore these views through three brief case studies drawn from recent research.

Implicit learning and tacit knowledge

Abstract: I examine the phenomenon of implicit learning, the process by which knowledge about the ralegoverned complexities of the stimulus environment is acquired independently of conscious attempts to do so. Our research with the two, seemingly disparate experimental paradigms of synthetic grammar learning and probability learning is reviewed and integrated with other approaches to the general problem of unconscious cognition. The conclusions reached are as follows: (a) Implicit learning produces a tacit knowledge base that is abstract and representative of the structure of the environment; (b) such knowledge is optimally acquired independently of conscious efforts to learn; and (c) it can be used implicitly to solve problems and make accurate decisions about novel stimulus circumstances. Various epistemological issues and related prob1 lems such as intuition, neuroclinical disorders of learning and memory, and the relationship of evolutionary processes to cognitive science are also discussed. Some two decades ago the term implicit learning was first used to characterize how one develops intuitive knowledge about the underlying structure of a complex stimulus environment (Reber, 1965, 1967). In those early writings, I argued that implicit learning is characterized by two critical features: (a) It is an unconscious process and (b) it yields abstract knowledge. Implicit knowledge results from the induction of an abstract representation of the structure that the stimulus environment displays, and this knowledge is acquired in the absence of conscious, reflective strategies to learn. Since then, the evidence in support of this theory has been abundant, and many of the details of the process have been sharpened. This article is an overview of this evidence and an attempt to extend the general concepts to provide some insight into a variety of related processes such as arriving at intuitive judgments, complex decision making, and, in a broad sense, learning about the complex covariations among events that characterize the environment. Put simply, this is an article about learning. It seems curious, given the pattern of psychological investigation of the middle decades of this century, that the topic of learning should be so poorly represented in the contemporary literature in cognitive psychology. The energies of cognitive scientists have been invested largely in the analysis and modeling of existing knowledge rather than in investigations of how it was acquired. For example, in an important recent article on the general topic of unconscious memorial systems, Schacter (1987) never came to grips with the distinction between implicit learning and implicit memory. The latter, the focus of his review, was dealt with historically, characterized, out

Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work

Abstract: Background. This paper explores the conceptual and methodological problems arising from several empirical investigations of professional education and learning in the workplace. Aims. 1. To clarify the multiple meanings accorded to terms such as ‘ non-formal learning’, ‘ implicit learning’ and ‘ tacit knowledge’, their theoretical assumptions and the range of phenomena to which they refer. 2. To discuss their implications for professional practice. Method. A largely theoretical analysis of issues and phenomena arising from empirical investigations. Analysis. The author's typology of non-formal learning distinguishes between implicit learning, reactive on-the-spot learning and deliberative learning. The significance of the last is commonly overemphasised. The problematic nature of tacit knowledge is discussed with respect to both detecting it and representing it. Three types of tacit knowledge are discussed: tacit understanding of people and situations, routinised actions and the tacit rules that underpin intuitive decision-making. They come together when professional performance involves sequences of routinised action punctuated by rapid intuitive decisions based on tacit understanding of the situation. Four types of process are involved-reading the situation, making decisions, overt activity and metacognition-and three modes of cognition-intuitive, analytic and deliberative. The balance between these modes depends on time, experience and complexity. Where rapid action dominates, periods of deliberation are needed to maintain critical control. Finally the role of both formal and informal social knowledge is discussed; and it is argued that situated learning often leads not to local conformity but to greater individual variation as people's careers take them through a series of different contexts. This abstract necessarily simplifies a more complex analysis in the paper itself. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/000709900158001/abstract)

The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Group Innovation

Abstract: The complexity of skills and processes needed in the development of today's products and services requires that managers attend to the role of tacit knowledge during innovation. Knowledge held in people's bodies and heads, our unarticulated knowledge, is the very basis of creativity and is not easily captured nor codified. The process of innovation is both an exploration and synthesis. This article examines ways in which managers can begin to deal with tacit knowledge; how to create an environment for a divergent process that includes a wide and healthy proliferation of ideas and a successful convergent process in which options are narrowed and a solution is decided upon and implemented.

The Case Study Method in Social Inquiry

Abstract: It is widely believed that case studies are useful in the study of human affairs because they are down-to-earth and attention-holding but that they are not a suitable basis for generalization. In this paper, I claim that case studies will often be the preferred method of research because they may be epistemologically in harmony with the reader’s experience and thus to that person a natural basis for generalization.