Mountain Quest Institute

Knowledge

One of the resources provided by MQI for use in the Technology Management Institutes emerging across India is an article titled "Past and Present Influence of Knowledge on Leadership: The Happening Future” that was published in July 2008, Effective Executive XII(07), pp. 54-78.  Icfai University Press has provided the PDFs for the three magazines including these articles so you may print them in that format.  Note the copyright for these three articles:  “… In the spirit of collaborative advantage, with attribution, any part of this paper may be copied and distributed freely.”  Building on original research, we take a closer look at these concepts and what they may mean to the future.  Includes diverse definitions of knowledge and KM, and exploration of the KM field through the 14 learning objectives developed by the KM Working Group of the U.S. Federal sector.  The idea of the field of KM as a complex adaptive system is explored. [See results of the original research.] This article is available to download here.

In an organization, the decisions that are made every day by every single person determine the performance of the organization that day!  Knowledge is about making good decisions and taking the best actions in a given situation.  While the environment can create forces that may significantly challenge an organization's capacity to respond, the organization's response is heavily dependent upon each worker making the best action, doing the right thing to further organization's objectives.  This is true for the governing board members all the way across the organization to the newest employee, whatever their job description.  How well do they understand their job?  Can they trace their work responsibilities to the purpose and vision of the organization?  Do they know the effect of their actions on the rest of the organization?  In brief, do they have the knowledge to make the best decisions and take the best actions for their division, department and organization?  We can now see the connection from knowledge to action to results to performance.

Thus knowledge can be best understood as the capacity (potential or actual) to take effective action. When you understand a situation well enough so that you can take an action that results in the expected outcome, then you have knowledge of the situation. Knowledge is not the same as information.  Information can be stored in manuals and information technology systems.  When that information is used effectively it is knowledge, what can be called Knowledge (Informing).  However, the effective use of information as knowledge can only occur when it is associated with other information that represents a situation or event.  This process of associating information in such a way that it creates understanding, insight, meaning and the ability to take the right action is called Knowledge (Proceeding).

Explicit, Implicit and Tacit Knowledge

By the latter part of the 20^th century the push to understand knowledge and its value to organizations had spread across a number of disciplines with the result that the concepts of explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge began to emerge in both the academic organizational literature and the popular press.  Explicit knowledge is the process of calling up information (patterns) and processes (patterns in time) from memory that can be described accurately in words and/or visuals (representations) such that another person can comprehend the knowledge that is expressed through this exchange of information.  This has historically been called declarative knowledge (Anderson, 1983).  Implicit knowledge is a more complicated concept, and a term not unanimously agreed-upon in the literature. We propose that a useful interpretation of implicit knowledge is knowledge stored in memory of which the individual is not immediately aware.  While this information is not readily accessible, it may be pulled up when triggered (associated).  In other words, implicit knowledge is knowledge that the individual does not know they have, but is self-discoverable!  Tacit knowledge is the descriptive term for those connections among thoughts that cannot be pulled up in words, a knowing of what decision to make or how to do something that cannot be clearly voiced in a manner such that another person could extract and re-create that knowledge (understanding, meaning, etc.).  See Engaging Tacit Knowledge in Support of Organizational Learning (PDF, 25 pages) and its supporting Graphic (PDF, 2 slides).  A chapter authored by the Bennets entitled "Associative Patterning: The Unconscious Life of an Organization" appearing in Building Organizational Memories: Will You Know What You Knew? (IGI Global, 2009) connects these concepts to organizational memory. 

Surface, Shallow and Deep Knowledge

Another useful way to think about knowledge is in terms of surface knowledge, shallow knowledge and deep knowledge.  Surface knowledge answers the questions of what, when, where and who.  It involves visible choices that require minimum understanding.  Examples would be putting together a toy wagon or filling out a short-form tax return.  Much of everyday life such as light conversations, descriptions and even some self-reflection can be considered surface thinking and learning that creates surface knowledge.  Facts, data, concepts and information memorized for quizzes and tests (without a deeper understanding of purpose and underlying meaning) would fall into this category. Shallow knowledge is surface knowledge with some level of meaning, with that meaning typically related to an individual or organization and implying some level of action.  To make meaning requires context. See CONTEXT: The Shared Knowledge Enigma (PDF, 12 pages) and its supporting Graphic (PDF, 2 slides). Since social interactions such as conversations and dialogue help convey context, surface knowledge emerges and expands as employees interact in the course of everyday practices and processes.  For deep knowledge individuals need to develop understanding and meaning, integrate it, and be able to shift their frame of reference as the context and situation shift.  This requires a large amount of Knowledge (Proceeding) to know when and how to take effective action.  The source of deep knowledge lies in an individual's creativity, intuition, forecasting experience, pattern recognition, and use of theories. A paper titled "The Depth of KNOWLEDGE: Surface, Shallow or Deep?" will appear in VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, Vol. 38, No. 4 (December 2008).

Types of Knowledge in Terms of Roles

In any specific application there may be several areas of knowledge needed to take action.  These areas or types of knowledge can be grouped or organized according to similarities and differences, what could e called a knowledge taxonomy.  As a framework for recognizing and working with knowledge, the following taxonomy offers a useful grouping for understanding different types of knowledge seen from the viewpoint of what knowledge is needed to do a particular type of work or take a particular action.

Kmeta--Meta-knowledge or knowledge about knowledge, its creation, attributes, flows and integration.

Kresearch--Theoretical and evidence based knowledge composed of theories, laws, principles, and observations that provide guidance for understanding phenomena and the relationships among variables, attributes, processes etc. Why things happen.

Kpraxis--Pragmatic knowledge that relates to rules, heuristics, change management, dynamic processes and an understanding of how systems behave, change and adapt.

Kaction--Knowledge in action, often tacit.  Local knowledge that guides the hands-on activities and implementation of knowledge.  

Kdescription--Knowledge composed of descriptive information—who, what, when, where.

Kstrategic--Strategic knowledge that considers the action, activity or task in terms of its role in overall strategy and long-term impact on the community.

Klearn--Knowledge related to individual, group and organizational learning that considers the learning of the KMb team, the learning capacity of the solution as the future unfolds, and the impact of the task solution on the learning capacity of the community.

Taken together, these categories of knowledge play different roles in the KMb process. Meta-knowledge, Kmeta, represents the capacity to understand, create, assimilate, leverage, sculpt and apply various types of information and knowledge. Since most complex situations contain several disciplines and categories of knowledge, our use of Kmeta (knowledge about knowledge) also includes the ability to bring knowledge together. William Whewell, in his 1840 synthesis, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, spoke of consilience as “…a ‘jumping together’ of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation,” (Wilson, 1998, p. 8). E. O. Wilson also uses consilience to mean, “The explanations of different phenomena most likely to survive … those that can be connected and proved consistent with one another,” (Wilson, 1998, p. 53). In making sense of complex situations, the consilience of different frames of references and knowledge categories may provide the best understanding for developing a solution.

Evidence based knowledge, Kresearch, includes theoretical as well as empirical knowledge and represents the fundamental concepts that explain why things happen and those validated by the repeatability of empirical results. Such knowledge serves as a guide for setting expectations and possibilities and provides the user a level of confidence. Pragmatic knowledge, Kpraxis, represents the practical understanding of situations and how they change or can be changed. Much pragmatic knowledge is tacit, experiential and intuitive.  Knowledge in action, Kaction, represents the ability to take specific actions that achieve the desired result. It includes understanding the local context and situation within which the action is taken.  Descriptive knowledge, Kdescription, is information that informs the what, who, when and where of a situation. As can be understood from the discussion of knowledge offered by Stonier (see section 1.1), all knowledge is composed of information, but all information is not knowledge. Knowledge is information that, when combined in the mind (associated or complexed), creates understanding, meaning and, where action is involved, the anticipation of its outcome. The role of Kstrategic is to ensure that the actions taken are in consideration of their long-term impact and are consistent with the strategy, identity, and values of the organization. The role of Klearning is to ensure that as the process unfolds, KMb group members learn from each other and, when appropriate, build organizational learning into the task outcome to ensure that the organization is capable of adapting to future changes in the environment.

The above seven categories should be considered as a useful spectrum of knowledge areas, sometimes overlapping and often having gaps between them. They are selected for their usefulness in the problem solving, decision making, execution and feedback learning processes, particularly when dealing with complex situations.  Additional material on types of knowledge is included in chapter 2 of the down-loadable Knowledge Mobilization book.

Additional Resources

Expanding the Knowledge Paradigm (PDF, 8 pages)

The Fallacy of Knowledge Reuse (PDF, 15 pages) and supporting Graphic (PDF, 2 slides)

From Knowledge to Wisdom, From Consciousness to Extraordinary Consciousness (PDF, 9 pages) and supporting Graphic (PowerPoint, 1 slide)

See also the research pages on  Knowledge Management, Knowledge Mobilization, and Learning

This Web Site copyright 2008 by Alex and David Bennet. For educational and knowledge sharing purposes and in the context of knowledge mobilization, permission is given to copy and distribute materials on this web site with attribution.

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Last modified: 07/08/09