Posted by Jim Nash on November 02, 2003 at 11:36:54:

In Reply to: Why spin doctors love posted by Lauri Gröhn on October 30, 2003 at 00:36:03:

I have been watching this great dialog about tacit knowledge for quite some time and find it interesting. Perhaps, re-aligning our perspectives may help surface some agreement or some shared understanding about the 'differences' that may be real between the two perspectives. Let us think for instance if 'explicit knowledge' is the end all and be all of all types of knowledge. Based on general agreement, one may think about explicit knowledge as knowledge that can be codified, digitized, or made explicit. In other words, it is not tacit or implied. Now think about the various information- and knowledge- based activities, where it may be not easy to exchange or transfer the knowledge from one individual to another. This seems to be an interesting scenario, as many pragmatic debates on tacit knowledge center on such concerns. Many US government agencies, for instance, are trying to find means for archiving and transferring knowledge of an aging workforce near retirement and are interested in such issues.

In the early days of KM, technologists were trying to think how enterprises can codify and digitize human 'experience' and program it using AI, expert systems, neural nets, genetic algorithms, and the like. It was considered achievable when treating human knowledge as a set of 'programs' (set of logic instructions or the decision model) based upon codifiable 'assumptions' (boundaries of the decision model) that are executed with 'data residing in the memory' (working memory used with databases). However, gradual realization set in about the 'deep' processing and understanding capabilities of human decision-makers and actors. Such capabilities are treated beyond the computer-based programs, assumptions, and memories that cannot be easily made explicit or codified. Hence, the shift occurred in terms of transferring knowledge from 'expert' humans to 'novice' humans and various types of technologies are being applied in this process.

To make the story short, here is where I believe is general 'tacit' and 'explicit' agreement amongst others and between the threads posted in this discussion.

a) We cannot address most complex knowledge needs by focusing on 'explicit' knowledge alone.
b) We need a construct such as 'non explicit' or 'tacit' to handle complex types of knowledge.
c) Just like many other constructs that defy the reductionist logic, 'tacit' knowledge is not easy to define or measure…. (Heck, I do not see even general consensus on constructs such as 'knowledge' or 'management' even though everyone wants to 'know' and 'manage' and in some cases 'manage what one knows or not knows' / 'manage what others know or not know.')

Is having a common definition of 'tacit knowledge' an essential prerequisite for trying to seek better understanding of what is not explicit and is increasingly important for a more human society? Is having a common definition of 'humanity' an essential prerequisite for trying to seek a better understanding of shared concerns of the larger human society?

Some thoughts from Albert Einstein, the scientist and philosopher

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
-- Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." -- Albert Einstein

- Jim

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