Fred Nickols
My aim in this article is to clarify some terms commonly used in discussions about knowledge management that are often misunderstood. They include the following:
- Explicit knowledge
- Tacit knowledge
- Declarative knowledge
- Procedural knowledge
Knowledge
In general, we seem to mean three things by our use of the word "knowledge." First, we use it to refer to a state of knowing, by which we also mean to be acquainted or familiar with, to be aware of, to recognize or apprehend facts, methods, principles, techniques and so on. This common usage corresponds to what is often referred to as "know about." Second, we use the word "knowledge" to refer to what Peter Senge calls "the capacity for action," an understanding or grasp of facts, methods, principles and techniques sufficient to apply them in the course of making things happen. This corresponds to "know how." Third, we use the term "knowledge" to refer to codified, captured and accumulated facts, methods, principles, techniques and so on. When we use the term this way, we are referring to a body of knowledge that has been articulated and captured in the form of books, papers, formulas, procedure manuals, computer code and so on.
In Working Knowledge, Tom Davenport and Laurence Prusak draw distinctions among data, information and knowledge. Data and information fit within the third category above, that is, the notion of a body of knowledge that exists apart from people. Their view of knowledge is that it is "broader, deeper, and richer than data or information." They offer this "working definition" of knowledge:
"Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms."(p.5)
Thus it would appear that although Messrs. Davenport and Prusak distinguish among data, information and knowledge, their working definition of knowledge incorporates information, accommodates the notion that knowledge is a state of being and, at the same time, accommodates the view that knowledge exists apart from the knowers. It also accommodates the notion of knowledge as the capacity for action. Perhaps the main shortcoming of this definition is that because it includes so much it tells us very little.
From all this it does seem safe to conclude that there are two basic kinds of knowledge: (1) the kind that is reflected in a person's internal state as well as in that same person's capacity for action and (2) the kind that has been articulated and frequently recorded. This brings us to the concepts of explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge.
Explicit, Implicit and Tacit Knowledge
The diagram shown in Figure 1 offers a useful way of teasing out the distinctions between and among explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge.
Explicit Knowledge
Explicit knowledge, as the first word in the term implies, is knowledge that has been articulated and, more often than not, captured in the form of text, tables, diagrams, product specifications and so on. In a well-known and frequently cited Harvard Business Review article titled "The Knowledge Creating Company," Ikujiro Nonaka refers to explicit knowledge as "formal and systematic" and offers product specifications, scientific formulas and computer programs as examples. An example of explicit knowledge with which we are all familiar is the formula for finding the area of a rectangle (i.e., length times width). Other examples of explicit knowledge include documented best practices, the formalized standards by which an insurance claim is adjudicated and the official expectations for performance set forth in written work objectives.
Tacit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that cannot be articulated. As Michael Polanyi, the chemist-turned-philosopher who coined the term put it, "We know more than we can tell." Polanyi used the example of being able to recognize a person's face but being only vaguely able to describe how that is done. This is an instance of pattern recognition. What we recognize is the whole or the gestalt and decomposing it into its constituent elements so as to be able to articulate them fails to capture its essence. Reading the reaction on a customer's face or entering text at a high rate of speed using a word processor offer other instances of situations in which we are able to perform well but unable to articulate exactly what know or how we put it into practice. In such cases, the knowing is in the doing, a point to which we will return shortly.
Implicit Knowledge
If the knowledge in question can be articulated but hasn't, it is implicit knowledge, that is, its existence is implied by observable behavior or performance but it has not yet been made explicit. This is the kind of knowledge that can often be teased out of a competent performer by a task analyst, knowledge engineer or other person skilled in identifying the kind of knowledge that can be articulated but hasn't. In analyzing the task in which underwriters at an insurance company processed applications, for instance, it quickly became clear that the underwriters really had only three basic options: they could approve the policy application, they could deny it or they could counter offer. Yet, not one of the insurance underwriters was able to identify these options at the outset of the analysis. Once these basic options were identified, it was a comparatively simple matter to identify the criteria used to make the sort. In any event, once articulated, implicit knowledge becomes explicit knowledge.
Declarative, Procedural and Strategic Knowledge
The explicit, implicit, tacit categories of knowledge are not the only ones in use. Cognitive psychologists sort knowledge into declarative and procedural and some add strategic as a third category. As before, we will use a diagram to aid in sorting out matters (see Figure 2).
Declarative Knowledge
Declarative knowledge has much in common with explicit knowledge in that declarative knowledge consists of descriptions of facts and things or of methods and procedures. The person most closely associated with the distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge is John Anderson of Carnegie-Mellon University. He has been writing about these two notions for almost 25 years (see the References section). Being able to state the cut off date for accepting applications is an example of declarative knowledge. It is also an instance of explicit knowledge. For practical purposes, declarative knowledge and explicit knowledge are synonyms. This is because all declarative knowledge is explicit knowledge, that is, it is knowledge that can be and has been articulated.
Procedural Knowledge
This is an area where important differences of opinion exist.
One view of procedural knowledge is that it is knowledge that manifests itself in the doing of something. As such it is reflected in motor or manual skills and in cognitive or mental skills. We think, we reason, we decide, we dance, we play the piano, we ride bicycles, we read customers' faces and moods (and our bosses' as well), yet we cannot reduce to mere words that which we obviously know or know how to do. Attempts to do so are often recognized as little more than after-the-fact rationalizations. This knowing-is-in-the-doing view of procedural knowledge is basically the view of John Anderson, the Carnegie-Mellon professor mentioned earlier.
Another view of procedural knowledge is that it is knowledge about how to do something. This view of procedural knowledge would accept a description of the steps of a task or procedure as procedural knowledge. The obvious shortcoming of this view is that it is no different from declarative knowledge except that what gets verbalized is a task or method instead of facts or things.
It is easy to see how the disparity between the two views of procedural knowledge just presented could be the source of some confusion. In the main, this confusion arises because a great deal of know-how, that is, the ability to perform, is tacit know-how, that is, it cannot be articulated. If it cannot be articulated, then it cannot be declarative knowledge.
Pending the resolution of this disparity, we are left to resolve this for ourselves. On my part, I have chosen to acknowledge that some people refer to descriptions of tasks, methods and procedures as declarative knowledge and others refer to them as procedural knowledge. For my own purposes, however, I choose to classify all descriptions of knowledge as declarative and reserve procedural for application to situations in which the knowing may be said to be in the doing. Indeed, as the diagram in Figure 2 shows, declarative knowledge ties to "describing" and procedural knowledge ties to "doing." Thus, for my purposes, I am able to comfortably view all procedural knowledge as tacit just as all declarative knowledge is explicit.
Some reading this will immediately say, "Whoa there. If all procedural knowledge is tacit, that means we can't articulate it. In turn, that means we can't make it explicit, that is, we can't articulate and capture it in the form of books, tables, diagrams and so on." That is exactly what I mean. When we describe a task, step by step, or when we draw a flowchart representing a process, these are representations. Describing what we do or how we do it yields declarative knowledge. A description of an act is not the act just as the map is not the territory.
Strategic Knowledge
Strategic knowledge is used by some to refer to what might be termed know-when and know-why, that is, to knowing when to do something or why to do it. However, these appear to be aspects of know-how more so than separate categories of knowledge. In short, the concept of strategic knowledge does not appear to add much to any discussion of knowledge or knowledge management so it does not appear in any diagram and will receive no further attention in this paper.
Integration
Figure 3 pieces together the diagrams from Figures 1 and 2 and serves to illustrate the "fit" between and among explicit, implicit, tacit, declarative and procedural knowledge. The relationships are reasonably clear and, with one exception, warrant no further discussion here.
The arrow connecting declarative and procedural indicates that we often develop procedural knowledge or the ability to do something as a result of starting with declarative knowledge. In other words, we often "know about" before we "know how."
On to More Practical Matters
So what? Why are these concepts important? What are we to do with them? How can we put them to practical use? A few thoughts follow.
First off, it is important to recognize that the transfer of declarative and procedural knowledge occurs in very different ways. Second, although tacit knowledge cannot be reduced to words, it is quite possible to communicate or transfer tacit knowledge through other means. Third, if "knowledge management" is to have any meaning and any credence at all, we must say what we mean by knowledge - in all its variations and permutations - and we must do so in ways that are as free of conflict and overlap as we can make them. Otherwise, we run the distinct risk of appearing to not know what we are talking about.
In his article, Nonaka addresses the important issues of knowledge transfer and knowledge creation. He cites four such transfers or creations:
- Tacit to tacit. Acquiring someone else's tacit knowledge through observation, imitation and practice. The example Nonaka uses is that of a product developer, Ikuro Tanaka, who apprentices herself to a hotel chef famous for the quality of his bread. She learns how to make bread his way, including an unusual kneading technique.
- Explicit to explicit. Combining discrete pieces of explicit knowledge to form new explicit knowledge, for example, compiling data and preparing a report that analyzes and synthesizes these data. The report constitutes new explicit knowledge.
- Tacit to explicit. Nonaka cites here the product developer's subsequent conversion of her acquired tacit knowledge into specifications for a bread-making machine. However, as defined by Polanyi, who coined the term, tacit knowledge cannot be articulated. Thus, although Nonaka's product developer was clearly able to devise a set of product specifications based on what she learned while apprenticed to the chef in question, it seems doubtful that she actually articulated tacit knowledge. It seems more likely that she articulated some rules or principles or descriptions of procedures, that is, she created some declarative knowledge that subsequently proved useful in the design and development of the bread-making machine.
- Explicit to tacit. Internalizing explicit knowledge. Here, Nonaka indicates that the product development team acquired new tacit knowledge; specifically, they came to understand in an intuitive way, that products like the home bread-making machine can provide quality, that is, they can produce bread as good as that made by a professional baker. That Nonaka (or anyone else) knows of this suggests that whatever knowledge was acquired has been made explicit and that means it might have been implicit knowledge at one point but was never truly tacit knowledge because that cannot be articulated.
The process of capturing explicit knowledge, that is, of making implicit knowledge explicit. The development of procedural knowledge (in the sense that the knowing is in the doing). The transfer of tacit knowledge from one person to another without resorting to verbalization.
In all three cases, we will be talking about the systematic or facilitated acquisition of knowledge, not simply learning from experience.
Making Implicit Knowledge Explicit
This is a process of articulation, of making implicit knowledge explicit. Sometimes we are able to do this on our own and sometimes it requires the assistance of someone like a task or performance analyst, a knowledge engineer. When a performance analyst documents the work of insurance claims examiners in the form of adjudication algorithms, those algorithms represent implicit knowledge that has been made explicit.
Developing Procedural Knowledge
We are talking here of skill development, specifically, the acquisition of explicit, declarative knowledge as the basis for skill development. Often this works as follows:
- We are presented with a description of a way to perform a task.
- We practice it, perhaps haltingly at first but our proficiency improves with continued practice and it benefits from feedback.
Over time, we might even forget the original task descriptions that enabled our early attempts to perform the task.
Transferring Tacit Knowledge
The key here is to remember that tacit knowledge cannot be articulated but it can be communicated or transferred. Remember Polanyi's example of being able to pick a face out of a crowd? Although we might not be able to adequately articulate how we do that, or even to describe facial characteristics in such a way that someone unfamiliar with the face in question could pick it out of similar looking faces, we can develop the ability to recognize that face by presenting pictures and developing the ability to recognize that face from several different angles.
Conclusion
Knowledge management seeks to manage knowledge. Knowledge itself is a very slippery concept with many different variations and definitions. The nature of knowledge and what it means to know something are epistemological questions that have perplexed philosophers for centuries and no resolution looms on the horizon. Are we therefore to throw up our hands and turn away? Or do we simply acknowledge that we are in an ambiguous area and do the best we can? We must each make these choices in as informed a way as we can manage. There are no unequivocally correct answers, only theories and opinions. In the last analysis, we must decide for ourselves. Consequently, we owe it to ourselves to do two things:
- Become as knowledgeable as we can about the choices and issues facing us, including the nature of knowledge and knowing and what it means when we use terms like "knowledge management."
- Muster up as much clear thinking as we can because shoddy, muddy thinking will do us no good at all, whether in relation to knowledge management or any other area of endeavor.
References
Anderson, J.R. (1995). Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications (4th Edition). W.H. Freeman and Company: New York.
Davenport, T. and Prusak, L. (1998). Working Knowledge. Harvard Business School Press: Boston Nonaka, I. (1991). "The Knowledge Creating Company." Harvard Business Review, November-December: 96-104.
Polanyi, M. (1997). "Tacit Knowledge," Chapter 7 in Knowledge in Organizations, Laurence Prusak, Editor. Butterworth-Heinemann: Boston.
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