3.2 Types of knowledge and culture, meaning, and learning
This section outlines many of the foundation concepts that will later underpin study in the second half of this unit of study.
Knowledge is diffused subject to the distance and time factors that impact different individuals and groups. It may, for instance, be easy to train one team in a new service strategy. However, it may take longer for the knowledge to diffuse to other teams. How this knowledge is communicated or learnt will impact knowledge diffusion. Boisot suggests that to be effective the communication strategy, as with learning, has to consider the social and physical constraints impacting the target audience (Boisot, 1995:106). One of the key constraints is the meaning a message has for the audience.
Figure 1 Boisot’s knowledge typology
(Boisot, 1995:146)
Meaning promotes ‘an individual’s disposition to act’ and serves to ‘code’ the individual’s receptivity to future messages (Boisot, 1995:107).
Diffuse refers to knowledge that can be transmitted. Undiffused means knowledge that is in a form that cannot or does not possess the necessary features to enable it to be transmitted. This parallels what we have previously identified respectively as mobile and embedded knowledge.
Figure 2 Boisot’s knowledge typology
(Adapted from Boisot, 1995:146)
The level of competency required as an outcome of the learning is an essential question. Is the aim of learning to achieve an immediate threshold of proficiency for a new employee or apprentice/trainee? If so, the transfer of knowledge has to occur with an appreciation that the individual will not have the cognitive awareness or tacit knowledge cultivated within the specific situation. The individual may have already made some progress towards competence in the required application of the skills and knowledge but lacks the appropriate behaviours to effectively deploy the required skills and knowledge. In this case, the organisation may require competence to move to a basis where the individual can become aware of their own performance deficiencies (conscious incompetence). The employer may require performance standards to a level of mastery or unconscious competence. In organisations that learn, the aim is to ensure that all individuals achieve a level of unconscious competence in order to ensure those with mastery level competence can training other employees on the job. This promotes how well new employees, or employees new to a job move beyond conscious incompetence/competence.
Mastery, unconscious competence —
Ability to demonstrate competent performance, integrating all aspects of the required skills, knowledge and attitude, on a consistent basis across a range of conditions and variables, without full concentration. This is where tacit knowledge built from experience applying explicit knowledge in a context builds to create situated performance excellence.
Conscious competence —
Ability to demonstrate competence in performance while concentrating on requirements, integrating most aspects of the required skills, knowledge and behaviours but still requiring supervision and support on various conditions and variables.
Conscious incompetence —
Awareness of task and performance requirements but inability to achieve the performance standard.
Unconscious incompetence —
Unawareness of the performance requirement or that own performance falls below required standards.
As individuals progress in a job they develop the understandings and insights necessary to perform better. While competence can be taught and proficiency reached (conscious competence), it is situated experience in applying skills and interacting with others that builds mastery. Mastery requires self-reflection and the ability to move to a stage where action is completed with unconscious competence. Competence becomes an inbuilt, instinctive ability to learn from ongoing actions (experiential learning).
Figure 3 Competence and the type of knowledge
As suggested by the figure above, competence is a longer journey that just proficient performance. It requires experience in the situated context and the development of underpinning knowledge that enables meaning to be attached to performance.
The following figure provides an example of how different jobs involve different knowledge. The examples provided represent tasks (A to E) performed by a financial adviser. Each task has a different mix of knowledge types and each can be transferred to a different extent. Different competency or capabilities require different modes of transferral. Different knowledge types can be modified over time to be incorporated i nto more mobile and explicit forms. This can promote transferral by textbook, manual and similar forms of learning. As represented by moving knowledge from (D) to (E) the company may take jargon and slang regularly used by employees and integrate it into a manual or training program on government compliance training. The government language may be better understood or adopted once employees see it codified in a way that uses language appropriate to the workplace culture.
Figure 4 Knowledge structure and typology for a freight forwarder clerk
The figure below brings together many aspects of our discussions on knowledge and learning. It illustrates how learning can influence not only the capture, transfer and generation of new knowledge from the information base, but also can stimulate the flow of knowledge across existing typologies to build the overall knowledge assets available to an organisation or entity.
Figure 5 Learning and organisational knowledge assets
© Bowles, 1997, with permission.
Knowledge development is not a linear process where by one individual transfers knowledge and skills to another individual through a learning experience. Nor is the learning inherently held in a set of information or actions that one individual can convey to another individual or group of individuals.
Learning is omnipresent. Living is a process of learning, adapting existing knowledge to new situations and learning to learn for new experiences. The myriad of different situations and means to stimulate learning, mirrors the complexity and diversity of ways to acquired and transferred knowledge.
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