It's tacit knowledge but not as we know it: redirecting the search for knowledge
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#2003 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved. 0160-5682/03 $15.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/jors
It’s tacit knowledge but not as we know it: redirecting the search for knowledge NAD Connell1*, JH Klein1 and PL Powell2 1
School of Management, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK; 2Centre for Information Management, School of Management, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, UK A central issue in the knowledge management literature is the definition of the nature of knowledge, and particularly the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. This paper reviews some of the common standpoints on this issue, but argues that, within an organisational context, a useful alternative view is one in which knowledge is viewed as a systemic property of the organisational system to which it belongs. Thus, attempts to codify knowledge, and position it on a tacitexplicit continuum, are sometimes misplaced. Instead, this paper advocates approaches that view knowledge as a holistic system property. The paper considers the practical implication of this stance, from the perspective of knowledge transfer between individuals and between organisations, and investigates the potential that this stance offers OR practitioners. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2003) 54, 140–152. doi:10.1057=palgrave.jors.2601444 Keywords: knowledge management; explicit knowledge; tacit knowledge; systemic modelling; cybernetic modelling; soft OR
Introduction In an applied discipline such as OR, research must be relevant to the needs of practice, and research outputs should contribute to the development of improved practices. If knowledge increases the capacity to take effective action,1,2 then research contributing to the field of knowledge management should facilitate the ability of practitioners to empower those in their client organisations to take more effective action. Yet there is little evidence of this happening. Certainly, there are case studies3–6 that demonstrate how some organisations appear to have made better use of the knowledge that forms part of their intellectual capital. Nevertheless, the most that can be stated with certainty in the field of knowledge management is that some types of knowledge are more amenable to representation and transfer than others. Typologies of knowledge, such as the tacit-explicit continuum, have been developed, and there has been much speculation as to the extent of its transferability, characterising, for example, the ‘stickiness’ of particular knowledge in an organisation as the extent to which it proves both difficult for potential users outside the organisation to access or dislodge it, but also difficult to transfer it between different internal components of the organisation.7,8 Nevertheless, from the applied perspective of the OR practitioner there is still a long journey ahead.
*Correspondence: NAD Connell, School of Management, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK SO17 1BJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
As a starting point, Huber7 offers fifteen
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