How does your “tacit vs. explicit” dichotomy relative to the “procedural vs. declarative” dichotomy? Are they identical? (If so, why the novel terminology?) Are they totally orthogonal? Some other relationship?
Some notes, for my own edification and that of anyone else curious about all this terminology and the concepts behind it.
Some searching turns up an article by one Fred Nickols, titled “The Knowledge in Knowledge Management” [PDF]. (As far as I can tell, “knowledge management” seems to be a field or topic of study that originates in the world of business consulting; and Fred Nickols is a former executive at a consulting firm of some sort.)
Nickols offers the following definitions:
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. … 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 is knowledge that cannot be articulated. As Michael Polanyi (1997), 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.
Knowledge that can be articulated but hasn’t is implicit knowledge. … 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.
The explicit, implicit, tacit categories of knowledge are not the only ones in use. Cognitive psychologists sort knowledge into two categories: declarative and procedural. Some add strategic as a third category.
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. … For most practical purposes, declarative knowledge and explicit knowledge may be treated as synonyms. This is because all declarative knowledge is explicit knowledge, that is, it is knowledge that can be and has been articulated.
[Procedural knowledge] 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. …
Another view of procedural knowledge is that it is knowledge about how to do something. This view of procedural knowledge accepts 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 tasks or methods are being described instead of facts or things.
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.
Oh, no. The diagrams are taken from the paper; they’re in the PDF I linked.
EDIT: Which paper is, by the way, quite worth reading; it’s written in an exceptionally clear and straightforward way, and gets right to the heart of all relevant matters. I was very impressed, truth be told. I could’ve usefully quoted much more, but then I’d just be pasting the whole paper (which, in addition to its other virtues, is mercifully short).
How does your “tacit vs. explicit” dichotomy relative to the “procedural vs. declarative” dichotomy? Are they identical? (If so, why the novel terminology?) Are they totally orthogonal? Some other relationship?
Explicit vs. tacit knowledge isn’t a CFAR concept, and is pretty well established in the literature. Here’s an example:
https://www.basicknowledge101.com/pdf/km/KM_roles.pdf
Some notes, for my own edification and that of anyone else curious about all this terminology and the concepts behind it.
Some searching turns up an article by one Fred Nickols, titled “The Knowledge in Knowledge Management” [PDF]. (As far as I can tell, “knowledge management” seems to be a field or topic of study that originates in the world of business consulting; and Fred Nickols is a former executive at a consulting firm of some sort.)
Nickols offers the following definitions:
Thanks! (I’m assuming you made the diagrams?)
Oh, no. The diagrams are taken from the paper; they’re in the PDF I linked.
EDIT: Which paper is, by the way, quite worth reading; it’s written in an exceptionally clear and straightforward way, and gets right to the heart of all relevant matters. I was very impressed, truth be told. I could’ve usefully quoted much more, but then I’d just be pasting the whole paper (which, in addition to its other virtues, is mercifully short).
Huh, thought I skimmed the paper and didn’t see diagrams but somehow missed them I guess