@knowledge-management @research @systems-thinking @knowledge
26/05/23 15:05:44 Reading: https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2882
Defines a technical systems, as opposed to technology as realting to knowledge management and knowledge management systems.
…we define technology as knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships embedded in machines and methods….A technical system is a specific combination of machines and methods employed to produce a desired outcome.”
A KMS then aims to coordinate actors in knowledge management towards some system goal (or expected behaviour). This is similar to the Meadows definition of a system.
Most KMS have two dimensions, you want to balance the dynamism of knowledge growth with the structure and codification of embodied knowledge in this like databases etc.
Hedlund (1994) differentiates the individual/social knowledge dimension into four different levels: individual, small group, organization, and the inter-organizational domain. He also characterizes the knowledge transfer and transformation processes that run between types of knowledge and across organizational levels. He identifies three processes that work within the organization and one that moves knowledge across the organizational boundary. The first internal process is reflection, comprised of the reciprocal processes of internalization (transferring and transforming explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge) and articulation (transferring and transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge). The second internal process is dialogue, comprised of the reciprocal processes of extension (transferring and transforming knowledge from the individual level through to the interorganizational domain) and appropriation (transferring and transforming knowledge from the inter-organizational domain through to the individual level).
Tacit Knowledge
That knowledge that is hard to express and normally ‘captured’ through social interaction and repetition. Normally requires extensive interaction. One of the examples given on the wiki is interpreting a statistical equation funnily enough.
It pops up too in language learning, without sitting down on front a grammar book. What could also be put down to muscle memory in something like jiu-jitsu, over time just picking up small tweaks to get desired result.
The key for acquiring this knowledge seems to be experience1.
The Nonanka-Takeuchi model 2 postulates 4 modes of knowledge conversion (even though the contradiction that tacit knowledge cant be codified is present in the literature).
- From tacit to tacit (socialization).
- From tacit to explicit (externalization).
- From explicit to explicit (combination).
- From explicit to tacit (internalizatoin).
The aim of this model is to explain how to convert tacit knowledge into organizational knowledge.
In their book they say that Japanese companies view company knowledge as primarily tacit, western management likes to view a companies knowledge as embedded in numbers and data, a chemical formula, or algorithm to be run. They claim that knowledge (mental models that people in the company hold) shapes things.
Explicit knowledge can easily be “processed” by a computer, transmitted electronically, or stored in database. But the subjective and intuitive nature of tacit knowledge makes it difficult to process or transmit in any systematic or logical manner
This conversion of the tacit to explicit in the organisation is apparentely the key to Japanese company success.
New knowledge is born in ambiguity and redundancy.
Footnotes
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Maybe read more here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0170840600213001 ↩
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Ikujiro Nonaka proposed a model of knowledge creation that explains how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge, both of which can be converted into organisational knowledge.[15] While introduced by Nonaka in 1990,[16] the model was further developed by Hirotaka Takeuchi and is thus known as the Nonaka–Takeuchi model. ↩