Tacit Knowledge and Explicit Knowledge

Running head: TACIT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
Tacit Knowledge and Explicit Knowledge
Student’s name:
University:
Author’s note:

1
TACIT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
Introduction
Knowledge management is an important aspect of human resource management.
Knowledge management, often known as KM, can be defined as the process of generating
and sharing, utilizing and managing the fundamental knowledge, data and information of an
organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve success and attain the
organizational objectives (Dalkir, 2013). Scholars have propounded three types of
knowledge, namely explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge. Michael Polanyi, the celebrated
social philosopher, has maintained the importance of tacit knowledge in human efficiency
and has shown its relation to explicit and implicit knowledge. In the following discussions, an
attempt will be made to understand the concepts of tacit and explicit knowledge and
understand their importance in strategic human resource management.
Post 1: Explicit knowledge
Explicit knowledge is the most fundamental form of knowledge. It is readily
accessible and articulated. It is also easily codified, digitized, stored and distributed. This is a
form of formal knowledge as well. (Hislop, Bosua, & Helms, 2018) Data or information
retrieved from books, reports, websites or other platforms, even the company datasheets and
records are all forms of explicit knowledge. For example, a software engineer knows how to
create a website by his/her knowledge of programming language, which she has learnt from
her course and personal study. Or a CEO knows how his/her organization is doing by
assessing the reports from the respective departments.
Explicit knowledge is often interpreted as “Knowing what” (Hospers, 2013) It is the
means of gathering primary information about a rational element. Moreover, this kind of
knowledge is entirely objective. For two different individuals, a company report sheet will

2
TACIT KNOWLEDGE AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
provide the same information and judgement about the same. For example, if an
organization’s annual report indicates a 12% increase in net profit than the previous financial
year, it will be interpreted as a good financial performance by the organization by anyone
examining it.
Explicit knowledge is easy to articulate or share. In reality, these two aspects of
explicit knowledge are interrelated. To elucidate, explicit knowledge is easy to share because
it is always in an articulated form. It is always written down or visualized. Specifically, it is
always made accessible by being stored and codified. It is often regarded as complimentary
to tacit knowledge.
This kind of knowledge is very important to knowledge management of an
organization. For efficiency and enhancing expertise, an organization needs to make all its
information accessible to all of its employees. It is important for learning and development of
the employees as well as maintaining transparency in the business. This is why organizations
strive for retaining knowledge bank in the form of explicit knowledge.
Post 2: Tacit Knowledge
Polanyi, in his famous work “Personal Knowledge” has maintained that creative and
innovative acts always contain the element of strong personal feelings and notions of
commitment, which is often impossible to articulate or share. (Gascoigne, & Thornton, 2014)
This kind of knowledge is obtained from subjective experience. Imagination, inference or
instinct leads a person to gain tacit knowledge in an immediate manner. As it is a subjective
notion, it is hard to describe to another person or even share the knowledge with someone
else. Hence, tacit knowledge is an important competitive advantage of an organization, for it
is difficult to reproduce or get hold of the tacit knowledge of an employee .( Kimble, 2013)