Posted by Bo Newman on March 21, 2000 at 15:28:10:

In Reply to: Re: Model for a Knowledge Audit posted by Denham on March 21, 2000 at 12:20:38:

Denham makes a good point about the importance of implicit knowledge.

When you think about it, knowledge artifacts differ from one another in several ways: their form of codification, the way in which they are rendered, their degree of abstraction and their ability to enable actions and decisions. They also vary in their degree of articulation; they can be explicit, implicit or tacit. However, most knowledge artifacts actually contain a combination of articulations.

One thing that characterizes implicit knowledge is that meaning must be inferred. This is because, unlike with explicit knowledge, the codification process is incomplete. Explicit knowledge can be interpreted totally based on content, whereas interpreters of implicit knowledge must rely on some form of previously retained knowledge.

The potential for ambiguity is one of the characteristics of implied knowledge. Most readers of the sentence, “Ann put on her heavy coat and locked up her classroom,” implicitly understand that it is winter and Ann is a teacher, but there are other inferences that could be made as well. For consistent interpretation, both the person making the statement and the person interpreting it must share some common frame of reference to understand when heavy coats are worn and who locks up classrooms.

Implicit knowledge artifacts can also be found in process-specific software. In developing the software, the designers had to conceptualize the processes that the software would be supporting. That knowledge will then show up in the way the software is intended to be used and in the range of behaviors it directly supports. Even if not explicitly apparent, these implicit knowledge artifacts will effectively constrain users’ actions. Kurt Conrad in his 1995 paper, SGML, HyTime, and Organic Information Management Models, http://www.sagebrushgroup.com/organic.htm referred to this as implicit policy making by technologists.

Cheers -

Bo Newman

• The Knowledge Management Forum

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