SHRM Report: Examining Tacit and Explicit Knowledge in Organizations

This report delves into the concepts of tacit and explicit knowledge, as defined by Michael Polanyi, and their significance in Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM). Tacit knowledge, which is difficult to articulate, is crucial for organizational decision-making and collective behavior, while explicit knowledge, which is easily documented, is essential for data management. The report provides examples of organizations like Buckman Laboratories, Ernst & Young, and Accenture that effectively utilize both types of knowledge. Buckman Laboratories uses online forums for tacit knowledge sharing among sales agents, while Ernst & Young and Accenture focus on codifying and reusing explicit knowledge to improve best practices. The report highlights the importance of knowledge sharing through various tools, including face-to-face meetings, virtual platforms, and social networking sites, and emphasizes how these practices contribute to organizational success. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for organizations to manage both tacit and explicit knowledge effectively to drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge.

Running head: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Provide examples of organization in today’s world that uses Michael
Polanyi’s concept of tacit and explicit knowledge and explain why this is
important to human resource management.
Tacit knowledge is a knowledge which is difficult to transfer to other persons by
verbalizing it or in written format. This kind of knowledge is automatic, needs little time and
also assists organizations to build decisions and affect the collective behaviour of their
workers. Explicit knowledge or information can be written down or expressed easily for
communication. In an organization, explicit knowledge is codified and gathrered as
databases to be further accessed with high reliability, quality and rapid retrieval systems.
According to Michael Polanyi’s theory it is believed that creative acts like discovery is
influenced by strong personal feelings. He emphasized strongly on dialogue in an open
community. He also extended his model for describing the nature of human knowledge that is
found in myth, religion and art (Arnett & Wittmann, 2014).
In an organization, the basic way for community members for accessing tacit
knowledge is by interrogating questions. A regular face to face meeting can be helpful in case
of co-located community. Whereas multinational businesses need some kind of virtual
meetings to raise questions and receive answers (Chuang, Jackson & Jiang, 2016).
Discussions can also be made with web based or email-based tools that will permit this
facility. These are proved to be popular tools to share knowledge in the communities. An
organization named Buckman Laboratories operates many international communities of
practice, where each has its own question-answer forum. This helps the sales agents who face
customers anywhere in the world and can receive lessons and advices from their co-workers
just through an email (Dzekashu & Walter, 2014). The answers or replies are collated on the
community forum in form of “threaded discussions” and saved later for the community

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members to discuss and read them and thereby learn themselves (Kimble, 2013). Many other
social networking websites and software like Twitter, Facebook, Sales Force Chatter and
Yammer also provide such assistance to their co munity members for asking help to each
other whenever required. For sales and marketing, this type of online interaction has been
very useful and has worked better instead of sitting behind a screen or on a desk. Smart
phones are also used for online communication in any part of the world (Panahi, Watson &
Partridge, 2013).
Explicit knowledge is scholarly information or data that can be depicted in precise
language, copyrights, patents and arithmetic equations. The workers of Ernst and Young
create a worldwide brain of accurate wisdom to integrate the dissimilarities in the cultures
(Hau et al, 2013). They are able to access business related problems from a multitude of
different prospects. They view knowledge objects that can be used or applied in any cultural
environment in the form of templates of core insights. Their sharing and documentation of
knowledge forms the foundation of their repository of international “best practices”
(Maravilhas & Martins, 2019). They provide a number of workable approaches to a problem
irrespective of where and when it occurs (Yu, Yu & Yu, 2013). Another famous organization
named Andersen Consulting, nowadays known as Accenture, discovered elaborate
procedures to store, codify and reuse all kind of accurate knowledge. The organization has a
“people-to-documents” appeal that derives data and information from the man who is
involved in its development and is made free from its developer. Reuse is done for the chosen
information while the client-responsive information is removed. For other similar industries,
data is changed into a prosperous and proven clarification (Masa'deh et al, 2015).

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References
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