GLIS 691 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Tacit Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge, Reverse Engineering
18 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
GLIS661
Week 3
Jan. 25
Selected Knowledge Management Models
● Nonaka & Takeuchi
○ Management professors in North America
○ Studying innovation, not KM
○ Looking at Japanese companies
■ Reverse engineering innovation
○ Change how you think of innovation
○ Innovation is failure
■ People do not go straight to success, they use problem solving and have
perseverance
■ Brilliant ideas are not enough
○ There are three levels
■ 1. Individual
■ 2. Group
■ 3. Organization
● Socialist Constructivist theory
○ Separate of isolation
○ People test out ideas
■ Becomes a cognitive mirror
○ Eventually becomes adopted by the organization
○ Culturally based
■ How do you get tacit knowledge to become organizational explicit
knowledge
■ Roots of this model is cultural based
● In North America there is too much explicit knowledge
○ People are not aware of the tacit knowledge
The Model
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Tacit
Tacit Explicit
1. Socialization 2. Externalization
● Great Idea
● People Talk About it
● Remains tacit
● Share with trusted
individuals
● Ex. brainstorms
● Need to document
● Difficult to transfer
knowledge from tacit to
explicit
● The more valuable, the
harder to make explicit
● Not all knowledge needs
to be made explicit
Explicit
4. Internalization 5.
● The hardest quadrant
● Are people using the
knowledge
● More important: are
people reusing the
knowledge
● It doesn’t matter how
often the knowledge is
reused, just that it is
reused
● Summary
● Synthesize
● Reuse
● Organizational Memory
● Multiple Formats
● Accessibility
● Computer Systems
○ This model is known as the Knowledge Spiral, or SECI
■ Widely adopted
○ Internalization
■ What makes this so hard?
■ People will not start using the new information/knowledge until
they are convinced
● Often ask trusted people if it works
○ This brings it back into a spiral
○ Asking trusted people is tacit
■ Tacit knowledge does not always need to be made explicit
● Why do we need theoretical models?
○ 1. Explain
○ 2. Predict
○ Want to understand phenomenons and understand why they happen
○ Models explain why
○ They can predict through Data Analytics
● Boisot KM Model
○ How easily is knowledge shared in an organization
■ Values are abstract
■ Procedural is concrete
■ Codified is explicit
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
People do not go straight to success, they use problem solving and have perseverance. How do you get tacit knowledge to become organizational explicit knowledge. Roots of this model is cultural based. In north america there is too much explicit knowledge. People are not aware of the tacit knowledge. Difficult to transfer knowledge from tacit to explicit. The more valuable, the harder to make explicit. Not all knowledge needs to be made explicit: internalization. More important: are people reusing the knowledge. It doesn"t matter how often the knowledge is reused, just that it is reused. This model is known as the knowledge spiral, or seci. People will not start using the new information/knowledge until they are convinced. Often ask trusted people if it works. This brings it back into a spiral. Tacit knowledge does not always need to be made explicit. Want to understand phenomenons and understand why they happen. How easily is knowledge shared in an organization.
