All entries for Saturday 14 June 2014

Quality of Tacit Knowledge

Nonaka said that Tacit knowledge can be shared into another person's tacit knowledge through observation, socializing, praciticng, imitation, etc.

However, I do have doubts about this - althogh it can be developed into our know Explicit knowledge - is it at the sacrifice of the quality of that knowledge. This quality can be the effectiveness of what the original tacit knowledge was, for the initial purpose of the tacit knowledge. For instance, if I observe someone doing something which is very effective, then I use that same technqiue but for a different purpose but maybe it is not an important purpose or it is not done correctly - is this then useful knowledge?

I do understand that Nonaka might argue this as a method of knowledge creation - adapting it to one's own use - but what's the point of sharing knowledge if the initial purpose is not shared as well?

I feel that some knowledge is practiced based on a certain purpose, but how would someone else who tries to observe and learn the same tacit knowledge that was not articulated really understand what is going on?

So new knowledge is created - but what happens to the origin of that knowledge? does it end there? Yes the tacit knowledge can turn to explicit and can be more visible to everyone - but if you only rely on sharing tacit to tacit, loss of knowledge and originality or sense of purpose is also a real threat.

Shujaat Alikhan : 14 Jun 2014 21:17 |  Tags: Kbam Knowledge Mbe Tacit |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem