Tacit vs. Implicit Knowledge - KM Literature

[pliers100]

Hi

I mentioned that it would be interesting to look at the KM literature, attached are some lecture notes I have on the subject that you might find useful.

cheers andy lecture02.docx

[marijnkoolen]

Thanks Andy! I'm adding a few more detailed comments from you and others during the discussion:

(for transparency and future understanding, this message is added based on the discussion of our manifesto during CHIIR 2021, just so the contributions of others are visible and can be used as starting points to update the manifesto where needed.)

Andrew MacFarlane: You can't make tact knowledge explicit, its experiential - you can however use concepts of communities of practise and learning organisations to help people exchange knowledge of this form. Please see Wilson's polemic on this (http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html) and KM literature on tacit knowledge and Micheal Polanyi's work.

Stephann Makri: it's not possible to make all tacit knowledge explicit, but it is possible to document aspects of research that are normally left undocumented

Vivien Petras: The idea is to strive to make as much as you can explicit, i.e. explained and noted. Not all tacit knowledge can be made explicit. But we should be aware that there are a lot of implicit choices made and some can be made (more) explicit.

Toine Bogers: perhaps it's better if we use 'implicit' rather than 'tacit' knowledge.

Marijn Koolen: If an experienced IIR researchers runs a study together with someone with no experience, the latter will regularly ask: "why are you doing this?" This triggers reflection and (hopefully) an elaboration that in a way explicates something that was implicit before. Keeping track of these explications and sifting, sorting and combining them may well result in a reusable chunk of explicit or even encoded knowledge. We don't have to explicate absolutely every detail, but with some effort, we could probably surface some details that are useful to anyone reading, reusing, building on top off or reproducing our work.

So, should we update the manifesto to change 'tacit' into 'implicit', or at least to elaborate the distinction between forms of knowledge that can be explicated and forms that cannot?

[pliers100]

Marijin

I think its fine to address tacit knowledge, but think about how you will do it. Something like the communities of practice and learning organisation ideas are suitable here.

I do think you should make the distinction between ‘tacit’ and ‘implict’ as the latter could be made explicit given the context. Tacit is harder for obvious reasons!

I’ve loaded some of my lecture materials to github, which I hope you’ll find useful.

Best regards,

Cheers Andy

From: Marijn Koolen @.> Sent: 17 March 2021 13:06 To: biirrr/manifesto @.> Cc: Macfarlane, Andrew @.>; Author @.> Subject: Re: [biirrr/manifesto] KM Literature (#2)

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Thanks Andy! I'm adding a few more detailed comments from you and others during the discussion:

(for transparency and future understanding, this message is added based on the discussion of our manifesto during CHIIR 2021, just so the contributions of others are visible and can be used as starting points to update the manifesto where needed.)

Andrew MacFarlane: You can't make tact knowledge explicit, its experiential - you can however use concepts of communities of practise and learning organisations to help people exchange knowledge of this form. Please see Wilson's polemic on this (http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html) and KM literature on tacit knowledge and Micheal Polanyi's work.

Stephann Makri: it's not possible to make all tacit knowledge explicit, but it is possible to document aspects of research that are normally left undocumented

Vivien Petras: The idea is to strive to make as much as you can explicit, i.e. explained and noted. Not all tacit knowledge can be made explicit. But we should be aware that there are a lot of implicit choices made and some can be made (more) explicit.

Toine Bogers: perhaps it's better if we use 'implicit' rather than 'tacit' knowledge.

Marijn Koolen: If an experienced IIR researchers runs a study together with someone with no experience, the latter will regularly ask: "why are you doing this?" This triggers reflection and (hopefully) an elaboration that in a way explicates something that was implicit before. Keeping track of these explications and sifting, sorting and combining them may well result in a reusable chunk of explicit or even encoded knowledge. We don't have to explicate absolutely every detail, but with some effort, we could probably surface some details that are useful to anyone reading, reusing, building on top off or reproducing our work.

So, should we update the manifesto to change 'tacit' into 'implicit', or at least to elaborate the distinction between forms of knowledge that can be explicated and forms that cannot?

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