Differences With Explicit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge can be distinguished from explicit knowledge in three major areas:
- Codifiability and mechanism of transferring knowledge: while explicit knowledge can be codified, and easily transferred without the knowing subject, tacit knowledge is intuitive and unarticulated knowledge cannot be communicated, understood or used without the ‘knowing subject’. Unlike the transfer of explicit knowledge, the transfer of tacit knowledge requires close interaction and the buildup of shared understanding and trust among them.
- Main methods for the acquisition and accumulation:Explicit knowledge can be generated through logical deduction and acquired through practical experience in the relevant context. In contrast, tacit knowledge can only be acquired through practical experience in the relevant context.
- Potential of aggregation and modes of appropriation: Explicit knowledge can be aggregated at a single location, stored in objective forms and appropriated without the participation of the knowing subject. Tacit knowledge in contrast, is personal contextual. It is distributive, and cannot easily be aggregated. The realization of its full potential requires the close involvement and cooperation of the knowing subject.
The process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit or specifiable knowledge is known as codification, articulation, or specification. The tacit aspects of knowledge are those that cannot be codified, but can only be transmitted via training or gained through personal experience.
Read more about this topic: Tacit Knowledge
Famous quotes containing the words differences, explicit and/or knowledge:
“I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized people, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of civilization.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)
“Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)