3.3. Knowledge management and balanced learning strategies
Contemporary research verifies that tacit knowledge dominates an organisation’s capability requirements (Bowles 2005; Tough 1999).
Figure 6 Balancing learning for tacit and explicit knowledge requirements
(Bowles, 2005:6)
However, investment in learning globally seems to be overly focused on delivery of content and knowledge with a known or codified purpose, i.e. explicit knowledge (see the above figure).
While explicit knowledge is the small fraction of an organisation’s knowledge capital assets, it has attracted the greatest attention. This has come in the form of skills training for products, services and compliance requirements. Tacit or uncodified knowledge while forming a major percentage of knowledge assets has, by way of contrast, generally attracted substantially less investment. This is also despite the fact codified knowledge is tangible and easy to transfer or replicate by one’s competitors. Making tacit knowledge explicit so that it can be ‘transferred’ across the organisation or a supply chain is very risky. As stated, once explicit knowledge is much more mobile.
Learning is tied to knowledge as both a physical process and human social processes by which people create, raise and filter information (Bowles, 2005:6). HRD practitioners can use learning to ensure knowledge is created and transferred using processes that encourage physical, symbolic and interpersonal interaction. These processes can be very dynamic and highly embedded in the organisation’s own context. The majority of learning received by an individual in a workplace situation will, however, not be restricted to formal channels. HRD has to recognise that it is no longer sufficient to manage individual and collective knowledge just through formal training programs tied to job descriptions, products, and codified procedures and manuals.
The development of general rules for application of knowledge or codification of tacit knowledge to make it explicit, such as that found in manuals, work instructions and training programs, cannot capture all the knowledge that dictates performance.
Only novices use expressible rules to guide their actions while experts use intuitive, inexpressible competencies. (Collins in Ruggles, 1997: 151)
Tacit knowledge may be used through the internalisation and unconscious use of what is known. Some of this may relate to tasks that are so highly routinised that they can be made explicit. One can, therefore, manage the absorption, transfer and expansion of some forms of knowledge. However, if the tasks require thinking then solidified processes, rules and structures can actually inhibit the development of tacit knowledge that individuals use to achieve expert performance, intuition, creativity and innovation within an organisation (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1997:33–35; Robinson & Stern, 1997:89).
Maximising capital value of knowledge assets requires recognition of the volatile mix of the dimensions. It also must recognise the need to promote tacit knowledge assets that will deliver the human capabilities necessary to make organisations and teams responsive, agile and able to seize potential market opportunities (Bowles, 2003:132). Learning is therefore the key to maximisation of an organisation’s knowledge capital assets. The true determinant of effective management of knowledge may therefore reside in an organisation's capacity to harness learning that can transfer knowledge that is either embedded or mobile or falls into either tacit or explicit dimensions.
Reading 2
Zaharias, P, Samiotis, K & Poulymenakou, A (27-29 June 2004), ‘Learning in Knowledge-intensive Organisations: Methods and Tools for Enabling Organisational Learning Processes’, Pawar: 7th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, Bremen, pp. 467-477. Sourced June 2005, at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/library/organisational_learning.pdf.
Activity
The above reading is a useful example of how researchers are developing technologies that not only build organisational knowledge, but use learning principles to advance the actual adoption of KM tools.
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