KNOWLEDGE MEANING,AND TYPES

KNOWLEDGE

(F.A. Uriarte, Jr. ASEAN Foundation) + other sources

The ability to manage knowledge is crucial in today ’ s knowledge economy. The
creation and diffusion of knowledge have become increasingly important factors
in competitiveness. More and more, knowledge is being thought of as a valuable
commodity that is embedded in products (especially high-technology products)
and embedded in the tacit knowledge of highly mobile employees. While
knowledge is increasingly being viewed as a commodity or intellectual asset,
there are some paradoxical characteristics of knowledge that are radically
different from other valuable commodities. These knowledge characteristics
include the following:

• Using knowledge does not consume it.
• Transferring knowledge does not result in losing it.
• Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it is scarce.
• Much of an organization ’ s valuable knowledge walks out the door at the end
of the day.

The advent of the Internet, the World Wide Web, has made unlimited sources of
knowledge available to us all. Pundits are heralding the dawn of the Knowledge
Age supplanting the Industrial Era. Forty-fi ve years ago, nearly half of all
workers in industrialized countries were making or helping to make things . By
the year 2000, only 20 percent of workers were devoted to industrial work — the
rest was knowledge work ( Drucker 1994 ; Barth 2000 ). Davenport (2005, p. 5)
says about knowledge workers that “ at a minimum, they comprise a quarter of
the U.S. workforce, and at a maximum about half. ” Labor-intensive
manufacturing with a large pool of relatively cheap, relatively homogenous labor
and hierarchical management has given way to knowledge-based organizations.
There are fewer people who need to do more work.
Organizational hierarchies are being put aside as knowledge work calls for more
collaboration. A firm only gains sustainable advances from what it collectively
knows, how efficiently it uses what it knows, and how quickly it acquires and
uses new knowledge ( Davenport and Prusak 1998 ). An organization in the
Knowledge Age is one that learns, remembers, and acts based on the best
available information, knowledge, and know-how.

All of these developments have created a strong need for a deliberate and
systematic approach to cultivating and sharing a company ’ s knowledge base —
one populated with valid and valuable lessons learned and best practices. In
other words, in order to be successful in today ’ s challenging organizational
environment, companies need to learn from their past errors and not reinvent
the wheel.
Knowledge is increasingly being recognized as the new strategic imperative of
organizations. The most established paradigm is that knowledge is power.
Therefore, one has to hoard it, keep it to oneself to maintain an advantage. The
common attitude of most people is to hold on to one’s knowledge since it is what
makes him or her an asset to the organization. Today, knowledge is still
considered power – an enormous power in fact – but the understanding has
changed considerably, particularly from the perspective of organizations. The
new paradigm is that within the organization knowledge must be shared in order
for it to grow. It has been shown that the organization that shares knowledge
among its management and staff grows stronger and becomes more

competitive. This is the core of knowledge management – the sharing of
knowledge.

Understanding Knowledge :

In order to comprehend knowledge management, it is necessary to first
understand the concept of knowledge. What is knowledge? How is it different
from information? And how is information different from mere data? We begin
with data. What is data? Data is a number or word or letter without any context.
For example, numbers like 5 or 100, without any context, are mere data.
Without reference to either space or time, these numbers or data are
meaningless points in space and time. The key phrase here is “out of context”.
And since it is out of context then it has no meaningful relation to anything else.
A mere collection of data is not information. This means that if there is no
relation between the pieces of data, then it is not information. What makes a
collection of data information is the understanding of the relationships between
the pieces of data or between the collection of data and other information. In
other words, what is essential in making data or a collection of data information
is the context, that is, the relation between the pieces of data.
Let us take an example. If we are given numbers like 1 and 7, they do not mean
much. We may relate to the number 1 as being less than 2 and greater than 0,
while 7 is a number greater than 6 but less than 8. At this level of
understanding, these numbers are mere data. However, if we associate 7 with
the number of days in a week, then we create context. With context, these data
become information. And the information given by that context is that there are
7 days in 1 week. We have established a relationship between the two pieces of
data 1 and 7. We have associated the number 1 with week and the number 7
with days. We have placed the data within a context thus producing information.
When information is further processed, it has the potential for becoming
knowledge. Information is further processed when one finds a pattern relation
existing among data and information. And when one is able to realize and
understand the patterns and their implications, then this collection of data and
information becomes knowledge. But unlike mere information that is context
dependent, knowledge has the tendency to create its own context. In other
words, the patterns representing knowledge have a tendency to be self-
contextualizing. These patterns which represent knowledge have a characteristic
of being complete – a feature that mere information does not contain. These
patterns are dynamic. They are constantly changing. But when these patterns
are fully understood, there is a high level of predictability and reliability as to
how the patterns will change or evolve over time.

Types of Knowledge

In the modern economy, the knowledge that it is able to harness is the
organization’s competitive advantage. This competitive advantage is realized
through the full utilization of information and data coupled with the harnessing
of people’s skills and ideas as well as their commitments and motivations. In the
corporate context, knowledge is the product of organization and systematic
reasoning applied to data and information. It is the outcome of learning that
provides the organization’s only sustainable competitive advantage. As such
knowledge is an essential asset that has become more important than land,
labor or capital in today’s economy.

In general, there are two types of knowledge: tacit knowledge and explicit
knowledge. Tacit knowledge is that stored in the brain of a person. Explicit
knowledge is that contained in documents or other forms of storage other than
the human brain. Explicit knowledge may therefore be stored or imbedded in
facilities, products, processes, services and systems. Both types of knowledge
can be produced as a result of interactions or innovations. They can be the
outcome of relationships or alliances. They permeate the daily functioning of
organizations and contribute to the attainment of their objectives. Both tacit and
explicit knowledge enable organizations to respond to novel situations and
emerging challenges.

Tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge is personal. It is stored in the heads of people. It is
accumulated through study and experience. It is developed through the process
of interaction with other people. Tacit knowledge grows through the practice of
trial and error and the experience of success and failure. Tacit knowledge,
therefore, is context-specific. It is difficult to formalize, record, or articulate. It
includes subjective insights, intuitions and conjectures. As intuitive knowledge, it
is difficult to communicate and articulate. Since tacit knowledge is highly
individualized, the degree and facility by which it can be shared depends to a
great extent on the ability and willingness of the person possessing it to convey
it to others.
The sharing of tacit knowledge is a great challenge to many organizations. Tacit
knowledge can be shared and communicated through various activities and
mechanisms. Activities include conversations, workshops, on-the-job training
and the like. Mechanisms include, among others, the use of information
technology tools such as email, groupware, instant messaging and related
technologies.
In managing tacit knowledge, the very first hurdle to most organizations is
identifying the tacit knowledge that is useful to the organization. Once relevant
tacit knowledge is identified, it becomes extremely valuable to the organization
possessing it because it is a unique asset that is difficult for other organizations
to replicate. This very characteristic of being unique and hard to replicate is what
makes tacit knowledge a basis of the organization’s competitive advantage.
Accordingly, it is essential for an organization to discover, propagate and utilize
the tacit knowledge of its employees in order to optimize the use of its own
intellectual capital.
In any organization, tacit knowledge is the essential prerequisite for making
good decisions. A new executive not yet familiar with the organization will find it
difficult to make good decisions since he or she has yet to acquire
tacit knowledge about the workings of the organization. Tacit knowledge is
therefore crucial to getting things done and creating value for the organization.
This is the essence of the “learning organization”. Management and employees
need to learn and internalize relevant knowledge through experience and action.
And they need to generate new knowledge through personal and group
interactions within the organization.

Explicit knowledge

Explicit knowledge is codified. It is stored in documents, databases, websites,
emails and the like. It is knowledge that can be readily made available to others

and transmitted or shared in the form of systematic and formal languages.
Explicit knowledge comprises anything that can be codified, documented and
archived. These include knowledge assets such as reports, memos, business
plans, drawings, patents, trademarks, customer lists, methodologies, and the
like. They represent an accumulation of the organization’s experience kept in a
form that can readily be accessed by interested parties and replicated if desired.
In many organizations these knowledge assets are stored with the help of
computers and information technology.
Explicit knowledge is not completely separate from tacit knowledge. On the other
hand, the two are mutually complementary. Without tacit knowledge it will be
difficult, if not impossible, to understand explicit knowledge. For example, a
person without technical, mathematical or scientific knowledge (tacit knowledge)
will have great difficulty understanding a highly complex mathematical
formulation or chemical process flow diagram, although it may be readily
available from the organization’s library or databases (explicit knowledge).
And unless we try to convert tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, we cannot
reflect upon it, study and discuss it, and share it within the organization – since
it will remain hidden and inaccessible inside the head of the person that has it.

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