Tämä on ryhmäessee, jonka yksi kolmesta tekijästä olen.
Introduction
Tacit knowledge is determined as the knowledge that is quite hard to grasp or be communicated forward verbally or in text form, and that is extremely challenging to transfer it from a person to another. Ergo, tacit knowledge is very valuable in a work place, since it can make a person irreplaceable. More specifically, there are skills that cannot be taught or articulated, for instance the way we speak a language or use the body language, so it is quite hard to learn them from another individual, which gives a unique value to the people who master such a skill. In other words, this special kind of knowledge lies within someone´s mind, perceptions and behaviour. (Cambridge Dictionary, 2019) defines tacit knowledge as: “Knowledge that you do not get from being taught, or from books, etc. but get from personal experience, for example when working in a particular organization”.
It is like a metaphor of an iceberg. What you see an experience on surface is accumulated by far larger mass of knowledge and experience what you cannot observe or measure beneath the surface. Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), Hungarian philosopher and chemist was first to acknowledge and to introduce the concept of tacit knowledge. He introduced it in 1966 in his book ‘The Tacit Dimension.’ (Businessdictionary, 2019). Generally, it is very important to practice and eventually be able to transfer tacit knowledge successfully to someone. This helps us understand how someone can excel in doing specific things, for instance being innovative, make smarter decisions, solve tricky problems etc. From a business perspective, when a person leaves the company they work for, then the latter one loses valuable tacit knowledge since the abilities of the specific person that left have not been transferred to another one in order to be replaced. Thus, the company ends up losing time and money in filling this gap, giving the advantage of time to their competitors. Tacit knowledge can even be the most valuable resource for the enterprise and enables most of the cumulated revenue.
Teaching of tacit knowledge
Therefore, it is profitable and necessary to make the trained individual to pass on his or her knowledge. All in all, tacit knowledge is hard to be acquired, understood and finally transferred among people, which increases its value and usefulness. Usually best way to gain tacit knowledge by listening and observing an individual who has some sort of deepen knowledge and therefore to learn from them and by being their pupil. It is rather hard to gain something what is unwritten, unspoken, and based on someone’s intuition, experiences, and, insights. To learn all of that from person to person can take even several years, so that’s why it is common for older employee to teach newcomers in company, and that is the reason, besides cheap labour force, why schools and employers offer internships to students.
This kind of form of transferring information has been around for a several thousands of years through recorded history. Some sort of master and apprentice relations has always been part of society. When we look back to history to the times before writing was invented, everything was oral and tacit knowledge, which was passed on to the next generation of craftsmen. Medicine, agriculture, masons, and all other crafts. Today’s world we have many ways of recording and transferring information, so we easily forget the presence of tacit knowledge. You can read a book about pottery, you can study a clay’s texture, but there is no better way to learn how to shape it than from another more experienced human. If we make modern examples even the guy from work who can use the half-broken printer from 90s which no other can make use of owns tacit knowledge about workplace environment which is hard to transfer forward, because it is nothing you can print on text book or use in any other situation in your life.
These kind of environment and craft based tacit knowledge is somewhat easier to pass on than less tangible attributes like good logical thinking, artistic touch, good sense of space and presentation, or leadership skills for example. Others can teach these skills and discoveries that they have found but to transfer it all to other person without of losing or shaping some pieces of information on the process is impossible. To say it blunt it is for example far easier to explain someone how to handle the trowel and what thinks to keep in mind and watch to make splendid handmade ovens than to tell someone how to make their clothes design worldwide cult brand, even when making handmade ovens is greater knowledge and craftsmanship needing task.
Recognise and transfer tacit knowledge
To begin, it can be quite difficult to distinct tacit knowledge on someone and acknowledge the benefits of this silent information if you are not yourself devoted to same line of business, but there are characteristics that might help someone understand it. First and foremost, tacit knowledge can only be acquired by someone own’s actions and it is considered to be created by an individual’s own experience with quite limited resources and aid. Basically, there is no guideline in order to recognise tacit knowledge but as the writer and specialist on the matter, (Julie Dirksen, 2017) says that “you know it when you see it”, meaning that there is no fixed way to understand it but through experience, discussions and analysis of human psychology. In other words, it is about a judgement call when you realise that you are dealing with something that has been learnt through tacit knowledge, and when something like this is spotted it is good to have a more flexible conversation with that person in order to understand their thinking and make it also visible to others that they have some special tacit skills.
Furthermore, although it might seem impossible to transfer tacit knowledge it can be done if the matter is handled in a delicate way and by using mainly ways that are connected to human psychology and mentality. The former can be transferred from an individual to another by the art of conversation and the eligibility to have a variety of matters to discuss and finally understand the other person´s mindset, as well as online social networks seem to be useful when it comes to tacit knowledge transfer since there are gathered hundreds of opinions and it gives a spherical view to someone who seeks data and different points of view to analyse and come to results and comprehensions.
When businesses are involved, it is common that companies might have a specific recording protocol when they teach something to someone and then that someone teaches it to another individual, so these recordings are available for other staff to watch and try to benefit from them, which increases the possibility of someone to get closer to someone else´s mindset and thinking, giving them the opportunity to acquire and then practice tacit skills. In addition, (Leonard and Barton, 2013) analyse a deep mentoring way called OPPTY; which stands for observation, practice, partnering and joint problem solving. During the first phase, the mentee observes the specialized individual, analysing what they do or do not and try to figure out why, while during the next phase the mentee tries to do a specific task or behave in a specific way on their own to see how they react in situations, having the expert supervising and analysing their actions. Then, mentee and mentor collaborate and work together on a task to analyse and address challenges, as well as finding solutions to the latter ones. During the last phase, the mentee partially takes the expert´s role and tries to reflect on different experiences, analyse behaviours, and internalize the knowledge that has been transferred to them.
Examples of tacit knowledge
There are several types of tacit knowledge that we bump into every day. Usually we do not even notice that an action or a behaviour are results of tacit knowledge since they are in our everyday life and we are used to see them without paying attention to the special source they are coming from. To begin, even speaking a language is an example of tacit knowledge, since no one teaches us the unique way we speak, and it only comes from within us, If we take away the grammar and vocabulary we are taught and keep the way we speak, our personal style of speaking and expressing ourselves in other words. Then, skills that we think that people have worked on very hard actually tend to be automatic and just exist in someone; such skills tend to be leadership qualities that specific people have, which gives them the opportunity to come to innovative ideas and succeed where others try hard to but never achieve to reach.
Then, I bet we have all known, hired or met a fashion designer, artist or interior designer; and we have probably wondered how they can have such a good sense of aesthetics and understand how a place, a painting or a cloth would be look modern, beautiful etc. The answer to these thoughts and questions is that they just have it in them, it is a skill that has been resulted from tacit knowledge and when the individuals notice that they possess it, then they practice and excel at it. Furthermore, intuition skills; like understanding things without using common sense or logic as well as body language are considered to be tacit assets that people already have and it is extremely difficult to explain or transfer them to other individuals.
Last but not least, sense of humour and in general emotional intelligence belong to tacit knowledge since people just have them and use them. How many times have we said; oh, our senses of humour match so well and we have so much fun together due to this, while another person can say exactly the opposite for us; which means that we do not control our sense of humour, it is just there and we either share it with someone successfully or we do not. Same for the body language that we can communicate with specific people just with a look or understand if someone feels comfortable just by observing their movements or reactions of their body. All in all, there are many examples of tacit knowledge that we meet every day and most of the time we are just used to skip them, and they go unnoticed, but they are there proving that some skills or behaviours we just have them within and we cannot easily share them with others.
Study of tacit knowledge
After Michael Polanyi introduced to the world the concept of tacit knowledge, it has been studied quite a lot after his findings. Theologians, philosophers, information, education and nursing sciences have taken their own stances to the matter after Polanyi’s studies. Tacit knowledge has been especially rising in the fields of human resource studies and in administrative sciences because there has been wider notice of its monetary potentialities because it can enable new ways to lead and make new practices to organizations that would lead to a new innovation. (Marjut Pohjalainen, 2012, p. 1) points out rather well the new studies and results of tacit knowledge. Modern studies have divided tacit knowledge to four different epitomes which are practical, sensuous, social and mental groups of tacit knowledge. These four epitomes are basically like the skill sets where you can divide different epitomes of tacit knowledge. Also, there have been pointed that the focal tacit knowledge works together and are complementary to each other’s rather than a being in a dualistic model towards each other representing each other’s contrasts, like they have been often represented after Michael Polanyi brought forward these concepts.
In conclusion we can say that the
acknowledging tacit knowledge in operational level of business and in fields of
science is rather new phenomenon, it has been around barely fifty years. So
certainly, there are wide aspects of possibilities to try and questions to ask
now when we can name what we are looking for. Although tacit knowledge has
always been part of societies and major channel to pass on knowledge at the
early steps of civilizations. Therefore, there might be many new discoveries
lying in future concerning human learning patterns and methods when tacit
knowledge has been studied more.
BusinessDictionary (2019). Tacit knowledge
Retrieved 11 May 2019, from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/tacit-knowledge.html
Cambridge University Press. (2019). Tacit knowledge
Retrieved 15 May 2019 from
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tacit-knowledge
Malamed, C. (2017). Strategies For Tacit Knowledge Transfer
Retrieved 15 May 2019 from
Pohjalainen, M. (2012).
Hiljaisen tiedon käsite ja hiljaisen tiedon tutkimus: katsaus viimeaikaiseen
kehitykseen. In Informaatiotutkimus 31(3) – 2012
