Knowledge Management: Strategy, Culture, Intellectual Capital, and Communities of Inquiry

Knowledge

Davenport and Prusak (1998) viewed knowledge as an evolving mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. They found that in organizations, knowledge often becomes embedded in documents or repositories and in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms. They also say that for knowledge to have value it must include the human additions of context, culture, experience, and interpretation. Nonaka (1994) expanded this view by stating that knowledge is about meaning in the sense that it is context specific. This implies that users of knowledge must understand and have experience with the context, or surrounding conditions and influences, in which the knowledge is generated and used for it to have meaning to them. This also implies that for a knowledge repository to be useful it must also store the context in which the knowledge was generated. That knowledge is context specific argues against the idea that knowledge can be applied universally; however, it does not argue against the concept of organizational knowledge. Organizational knowledge is considered an integral component of what organizational members remember and use meaning that knowledge is actionable.

Polanyi (1967) and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) described two types of knowledge, tacit, and explicit. Tacit knowledge is that which is understood within a knower's mind and which cannot be directly expressed by data or knowledge representations and is commonly understood as unstructured knowledge. Explicit knowledge on the other hand is that knowledge which can be directly expressed by knowledge representations and is commonly known as structured knowledge. Knowledge transfer in an organization occurs when members of an organization pass tacit and explicit knowledge to each other. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) proposed four modes of knowledge creation and transfer. [Page II-337]

• Socialization is the process of sharing experiences and, thereby, of creating tacit knowledge such as mental models and technical skills. Tacit knowledge can be obtained without using language through observation, imitation, and practice.
• Externalization is the process of articulating tacit knowledge in the form of explicit concepts, taking the shapes of metaphors, analogies, concepts, hypotheses, or models.
• Combination is the process of systemizing concepts into a knowledge system by combining different bodies of explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is transferred through media such as documents, meetings, e-mail, and/or phone conversations. Categorization of this knowledge can lead to the generation of new knowledge.
• Internalization is the process of converting explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge and is closely related to learning by doing.

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