Knowledge Management: Tacit Knowledge, SECI and Intellectual Capital
Knowledge Management
Knowledge management items test the distinctions between data, information and knowledge, the tacit/explicit split, the SECI model, and the systems and social structures that capture and share expertise. The exam favours classification questions: given a scenario, name the type of knowledge or the KM mechanism involved.
Core concepts
- Data, information, knowledge. Data are raw symbols; information is data organised with meaning and context; knowledge is information plus experience, judgement and rules for action. Wisdom adds values and decision principles.
- Tacit vs explicit. Explicit knowledge is codified - manuals, databases, procedures. Tacit knowledge lives in people: intuition, craft and mental models. Tacit knowledge is hard to write down and is the usual target of mentoring and communities of practice.
- Nonaka's SECI. Socialisation (tacit to tacit: shadowing, apprenticeship); externalisation (tacit to explicit: writing a procedure); combination (explicit to explicit: merging reports into a standard); internalisation (explicit to tacit: learning by doing).
- Intellectual capital. Human (skills and experience), structural (processes, databases, culture) and relational (customer and partner relationships).
- KM systems. Document and content management, expertise locators that answer who knows what, lessons-learned databases, wikis and communities of practice. Incentives and trust matter more than the tool itself.
- Knowledge retention. Capture critical knowledge before retirement or turnover using after-action reviews and knowledge maps.
Worked example
Classify each activity: (a) a junior analyst shadows a senior underwriter; (b) the underwriter writes an underwriting guide; (c) the guide is merged with the claims manual into one risk handbook; (d) a new hire reads the handbook and applies it.
(a) Socialisation, tacit to tacit. (b) Externalisation, tacit to explicit. (c) Combination, explicit to explicit. (d) Internalisation, explicit to tacit. Order matters: SECI is a spiral, and internalisation creates new tacit skill that can later be socialised to someone else.
Traps
- Equating knowledge management with installing a document repository.
- Claiming tacit knowledge can be fully codified; much of it cannot.
- Confusing externalisation (writing it down) with combination (reorganising what is already written).
- Calling a lessons-learned database intellectual capital rather than structural capital.