Posted by Kees de Vos on June 05, 1999 at 21:25:52:

In Reply to: Re: What is the difference between information and explicit knowledge? posted by Paul Gallagher on June 05, 1999 at 16:31:29:

Paul,

you state "Words, written or spoken, are symbols for concepts, symbols that both the speaker (or writer) and hearer understand in the same way, which allow communication of concepts."

In my experience, the larger and culturally divers an organization becomes the more this thesis becomes falsified. The interpretations of speaker and hearer will tend to diverge. Cultural backgrounds (take humor for example) and language barriers will tend to lead to situations in which the meaning given to the information exchanged is not the same for the speaker and the hearer, resulting in different knowledge, attitudes and action.

E.g. if my boss tells that I am dismissed, this will tend to another attitude than when the same words were spoken my a doctor in the hospital. Or sticking to your posting, is it 30 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. Misinterpretations like this on an oil platform might cause serious incidents...

In cases like this more emphasis should be on two-way communication, to allow verification of these interpretations. Book and one-way datawarehouse systems do not allow for this check.

I am pretty sure all of us at one time have received or send emails which resulted in other actions or behaviour than intended by the sender.

So in my opinion, books and systems are great in providing information which allows the "readers" to build on their existing knowlegde however they are not enough to be effective as a means of exchanging knowledge, which has been one of the priorities in nearly all projects I was involved in.

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