Tacit Knowledge

There is some tacit knowledge concerned with the project organization conforming with an architectural style, and with coding conventions.

From: Advances in Computers , 2011

Tacit Knowledge and Engineering Design

Paul Nightingale , in Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences, 2009

Publisher Summary

Understanding what tacit knowledge is, and particularly how the concept is used, is important for philosophers of technology because it is now a central concept in policy discussions related to engineering. It is used to explain why knowledge production is localized, cumulative and path-dependent, and therefore why designers, design teams, firms and regions differ in their technological performance. Given the impact of public policy related to the "knowledge economy," there is a legitimate role for philosophers of technology to investigate the foundations of these ideas in more detail. This is particularly important because the terminology of tacit knowledge is applied very widely, but is rarely explicitly explained. Just what tacit knowledge is, and how it is valuable during the development of technology, is often itself a "tacit" concept. This chapter defines engineering as the art of organizing and negotiating the design, production, operation and decommissioning of artefacts, devices, systems and processes that fulfill useful functions by transforming the world to solve recognized problems. This hopefully highlights the practical, creative nature of engineering, with a clear connection to judgments and choices about solutions that achieve a balance between potentially conflicting outcomes in terms of their aesthetic, economic, environmental, technical and other criteria.

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Information management for nuclear decommissioning projects

A.N. Leclair , D.S. Lemire , in Nuclear Decommissioning, 2012

Storytelling/oral histories

Documenting and converting tacit knowledge into a more explicit and useable form of information by conducting interviews and recording oral histories on a facility's activities before closure may prove valuable on occasions where insights and experience assist in confirming assumptions or providing context to past decision points. In a case where records and information have been lost or are deficient owing to weak records management practices during facility operations, oral histories assist in filling gaps on unreported hazards or areas of contamination. Documenting tacit knowledge during any phase of a facility's lifecycle can be a valuable exercise.

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Workflow—Checklists and expert rule sets

George Ellis , in Improve, 2020

Abstract

Knowledge work depends on the tacit knowledge of experts, which cannot be captured in step-by-step processes. However, even in the most complex workflows, there are guiding principles—what we will call rules—that define a common way to approach complex problems. Checklists and expert rule sets build up organizational memory for complex workflows by simplifying, engaging, and creating opportunities for experimentation. They simplify by collecting the wisdom of the team and providing an agenda for peer review. They increase engagement, provide a structured way to gather and improve the team's expertise over time, create challenge by giving a concrete standard to prepare to, and protect the entire team by preventing repeated mistakes through creating a large experiment where the team monitors itself for mistakes so it can install rules to prevent them happening again.

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Classic mistakes in water and effluent treatment plant design and operation

Seán Moran , in An Applied Guide to Water and Effluent Treatment Plant Design, 2018

Following the HiPPO

Professional engineers use a combination of explicit and tacit knowledge, founded in any given design case by as thorough an analysis of the design envelope as is practically possible to make their design decisions.

Their line management, the managers of various disciplines within the company they work for, and their fellow engineers and technicians within and outside that company may all have opinions on these decisions. Within the engineer's field of expertise, they should rely upon their own analysis, reasoning, and experience, neither unreasonably rejecting any suggestions nor wasting time on ones they know to be inappropriate.

It is common for a higher ranking engineer or manager to want to make their own mark on the process. Managers are generally less risk averse than professional engineers. Engineers from other disciplines or from outside the designer's organization have different priorities, and may well not grasp the full picture. The process designer cannot see the whole picture themselves unless they are willing to listen to these opinions, but they should insist on making decisions rationally.

While relevant experience should be respected, it is important not to follow the HiPPO blindly. Sometimes, however, it may be wise to stand aside from HiPPOs to avoid being trampled.

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Application of knowledge management systems for safe geological disposal of radioactive waste

Hiroyuki Umeki , Hiroyasu Takase , in Geological Repository Systems for Safe Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuels and Radioactive Waste (Second Edition), 2017

25.9.2 Intelligent systems based on tacit knowledge

In the field of KM, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge that is only known by individuals and that is difficult to communicate to the rest of an organization. Knowledge acquisition is the process of acquiring knowledge from human experts, mainly through interviews; it is regarded as the first stage of planning KM and designing associated intelligent systems. The Knowledge Acquisition Design System (KADS) and its more recent variant, "common KADS," represent the most used methodology in Europe for the development of intelligent systems. The KADS approach includes the following knowledge acquisition activities:

•

elicitation: extracting the relevant knowledge,

•

analysis: interpreting the knowledge in a specific context,

•

formalization: structuring knowledge components or flows so that they can be used in a computer tool.

Past experience with the use of KADS to develop input for an ES in a number of different technical areas has been rather mixed. A commonly encountered problem is that IT specialists have been charged with knowledge acquisition and have struggled to determine the relevance and completeness of input provided by specialists. To avoid this, in the JAEA project a team of experienced generalists in the waste management field have modified the conventional KADS approach, so that output from the interviews can be represented directly in a form of AM. This not only facilitates the interviews with specialists, but allows completeness of the argumentation chain to be readily assessed. Such output is also a useful guide for the formalization of the knowledge flow by an ES tool (Makino et al., 2009b; Osawa et al., 2009b).

An alternative approach is to use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns embedded in the judgments based on tacit knowledge. Investigations focused on artificial neural networks (ANNs), in which self-organization determines the connection strengths between a large number of artificial neurons. Manta (MAchine learning by a Neural network for Tacit knowledge Acquisition) is a generic ANN tool that has been applied to a range of problems appearing at the bottom layer in Fig. 25.3. ANNs tend to excel at problems where a large number of repetitive or similar operations are required; an example currently studied is classification of fractures along boreholes captured by borehole TV.

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Application of knowledge management systems for safe geological disposal of radioactive waste

H. Umeki , H. Takase , in Geological Repository Systems for Safe Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuels and Radioactive Waste, 2010

19.9.2 Intelligent systems based on tacit knowledge

In the field of knowledge management, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge that is only known by individuals and that is difficult to communicate to the rest of an organisation. Knowledge acquisition is the process of acquiring knowledge from human experts, mainly through interviews; it is regarded as the first stage of planning knowledge management and designing associated intelligent systems. The knowledge acquisition design system (KADS) and its more recent variant, 'common KADS', is the most used methodology within Europe for the development of intelligent systems. The KADS approach includes the following knowledge acquisition activities:

•

elicitation: eliciting the relevant knowledge,

•

analysis: interpreting the knowledge in a specific context,

•

formalisation: formalising knowledge components or flows so that they can be used in a computer tool.

Past experience with the use of KADS to develop input for an ES in a number of different technical areas has been rather mixed. A commonly encountered problem is that IT specialists have been charged with knowledge acquisition and have struggled to determine the relevance and completeness of input provided by specialists. To avoid this, in the JAEA project a team of experienced generalists in the waste management field have modified the conventional KADS approach, so that output from the interviews can be represented directly in a form of AM. This not only facilitates the interviews with specialists but allows completeness of the argumentation chain to be readily assessed. Such output is also a useful guide for the formalisation of the knowledge flow by an ES tool (Makino et al., 2009b; Osawa et al., 2009b).

An alternative approach is to use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns embedded in the judgements based on tacit knowledge. Investigations have focused on artificial neural networks (ANNs), in which self-organization determines the connection strengths between a large number of artificial neurons. Manta (machine learning by a neural network for tacit knowledge acquisition) is a generic ANN tool that has been applied to a range of problems appearing at the bottom layer in Fig. 19.3. ANNs tend to excel at problems where a large number of repetitive or similar operations are required; an example currently studied is classification of fractures along boreholes captured by borehole TV.

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Chinese Medicine and Complex Systems Dynamics

W.E. Herfel , ... D.J. Rodrigues , in Philosophy of Complex Systems, 2011

4.3 Research on tacit/embodied knowledge in the West

Literature on tacit and embodied knowledge has increased during the last three decades in the West. Previously, embodied/tacit knowledge and skills were not a major topic of philosophical inquiry. However, since 1980s, sociologists of science and technology realized the critical roles played by tacit knowledge and skills in scientific and technological research, teaching, and knowledge production with significant results. Insight into the various forms of embodied/tacit knowledge and skill in biomedical practice such as prenatal care, occupational therapy, nursing practice, surgical operation, has been provided. Research into knowledge management and research policy has also contributed to the understanding of the critical role of tacit knowledge and skill in technological design and knowledge as well as skill transfer and transmission.

Sociologists of science and technology have adopted Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge. They define tacit knowledge as:

Knowledge that is "imperfectly accessible to conscious thought" [Nelson and Winter, 1982, p. 79] yet will show its presence in the success of our performance using that knowledge. Using Polanyi's own famous example, he argues that a skilled swimmer are often unaware of the fact that keep one's lung full of air will enhance one's buoyancy while swimming yet will automatically do this while swimming.

Knowledge that is difficult or impossible to communicate to others with symbolic forms such as spoken/written language, or picture to successfully execute an action, even when full self-awareness is achieved. That is, one has to perform the knowledge or skill in order to convey it to others. This is the knowledge that is shared by the master with his apprentices or the "learning by doing" kind of knowledge where observation, imitation, correction and repetition are the essential modes of learning [Polanyi, 1966]. In other words, tacit knowledge could only be acquired and communicated through experience. Gertler, 2003, pp. 77-8]

For sociologists of science and technology, the tacitness of knowledge has significant implications for our understanding of process in scientific and technology research, training, and learning, and most importantly on the decision making process whereby tacit knowledge functions implicitly. The most distinctive characteristic of such tacit/embodied knowledge and skill is its implicit nature as convincingly argued by Polanyi [1966, p. 126]:

The analysis of a skilful feat in terms of its constituent motions remains always incomplete. There are notorious cases, like the distinctive 'touch' of a pianist, in which the analysis of a skill has long been debated inconclusively; and common experience shows that no skill can be acquired by learning its constituent motions separately. Moreover, here too isolation modifies the particulars: their dynamic quality is lost. Indeed, the identification of the constituent motions of a skill tends to paralyse its performance. Only by turning our attention away from the particulars and towards their joint purpose, can we restore to the isolated motions the qualities required for achieving their purpose.

Research on embodied knowledge in medical practice is more specialized. Like sociologists of science and technology, medical researchers highlight the inexplicability of tacit knowledge. Schell and Schell [2008, p. 71] tell an illuminating story of gaining embodied knowledge as occupational therapists:

I remember being told that spasticity was a function of abnormal muscle tone, and could be detected by rapidly stretching the affected muscles. If the person had spasticity you would detect a "clasp-knife type of catch and release." I confess that I had no idea what that meant. It wasn't until I started working with individuals who were recovering from brain injuries that I actually felt spasticity (i.e., used my own sense of touch and proprioception to gauge the muscle tension and release of that tension). Then I understood what was meant. Over time I learned to feel the difference between spasticity, rigidity, and other muscle problems, as opposed to tightness in joints capsule. This in turn led me to think about activity possibilities and limitations in different ways as I worked with the person to increase his or her functional abilities.

Such embodied knowledge involves all sensory faculties.

For instance, therapists working with individuals with persistent mental illness will notice if a client has body odour or smells as if he is not keeping up with his personal hygiene. This becomes a clue to explore what is going on in terms of his bathing and laundry routines. Therapists working with young children with sensory processing problems and attention deficit syndromes will see the child move his body, hear the change in the child's rate and quality of speech, and interpret from these cues that the child is becoming agitated by sensory overload. This prompts the therapists to introduce calming strategies or to teach parents how to manage the child's environment to avoid sensory overload. [Schell and Schell, 2008, p. 71]

They also emphasise the embodiment of the tacit knowledge, i.e., the existential aspect of knowledge, that is, how the body/mind experiences it when acquiring such knowledge. For example, for nursing practice, the embodiment of the knowledge manifests in patients unique understanding of their bodily function. Wild [2003, p. 172] noticed that patients with a urine catcher linked recurring tract infection with disrupted urine flow and pay close attention to their urine flow and drinking more water to insure urine flow.

Medical anthropology also explicitly reflects on the significance of embodied knowledge in medical practice. Gordon [1988, p. 269] points out that "much of clinical and practical knowledge is 'embodied' knowledge — knowledge sensed through and with the body. This includes senses of sight, sound, touch, smell". Cassell [1998, p. 32] argues that being a surgeon is fundamentally "a physical proficiency.… [L]ike sports and the performing arts, surgery is based on body learning, body knowledge. … One masters these skills by doing, not talking".

However, although the embodied knowledge is acknowledged by such researchers of Western medical practice, the significance of such knowledge is marginalized and ignored in accepted clinical decision-making processes. Instead, clinical decisionmaking is believed by practitioners to be exclusively based on evidence acquired through instruments, i.e., data from biochemical tests. Randomised-controlled trials and truth-preserving logical reasoning justify such techniques. Ellingson [2006, p. 301] argues that the mind-body dichotomy means that knowledge has to be disembodied, that is, the body of the researcher should not be involved in any way in the process of generating knowledge, let alone should it become the main source of information for clinical decision making:

Research reports typically are written following strictly social scientific or medical conventions, in which the author's agency is obscured via passive voice (e.g., "the data were collected') or represented through a sanitized "I," who reports having taken actions without describing any details of the body through which the actions were taken.

Information acquired via a human body's sensory faculty is rejected as evidence because it is regarded as subjective and unreliable. Hunter [1991, p. 52] explains the underlying rationale thus:

The aim of medical discourse is always to eliminate or control the purely personal and subjective, whether its source be patient or physician, so that the physical anomalies that characterized illness can receive the attention their successful treatment requires. Illness is a subjective experience, and the examining physician faces the task of translating it, locating the malady in the medical universe and conveying its characteristics and their meaning to others who know the medical language well … All case presentations seek to turn an individual physician's interpretation of the patient's subjective and private experience of illness into an objective, scientific — or, from another viewpoint, a reliably intersubjective and medically recognizable — account of disease.

In other words, information that supports a diagnostic and therapeutic decision ought to be scientifically reliable and objectively measurable. As shown by sociologists and medical anthropologists, embodied knowledge and skills play an essential role in clinical practice. However such knowledge and skill are not sufficient to justify diagnostic or therapeutic decisions. The medical profession must rely on test results that do not contain 'purely personal and subjective' information.

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24th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering

Vassilis Magioglou , ... Antonis Kokossis , in Computer Aided Chemical Engineering, 2014

2.3 Ontology Engineering

The approach enables ontology engineering to convert the problem concepts and tacit knowledge in usable form, establishing a natural vocabulary to filter the alternative interpretations of a described given problem. The terms are organized in classes where particular properties are assigned, giving the capability of reuse and grow. Following seizing upon biorefineries domain, where in optimization problems the superstructures developed have as building elements raw materials, technologies, intermediate chemicals and final products, four different classes were used to determine the ontology. Further information functionalizing a higher level of representation can be achieved by assigning properties which characterize classes and their individuals. Using the necessary properties (has input, has output) simple relationships among particular individuals (feedstock, technology, intermediates product) are described. More complicated relationships describing larger, multiple or inverse paths, are also employed using extra properties (can lead to, is processed with, produces, is produced by, produced through the process) and inferred ones. The classes, along with the properties assigned to describe the superstructure are presented in Figure 2 (Class 1: Feedstocks, Class 2: Technologies, Class 3: Intermediates, Class 4: Products). Additionally the ontology includes secondary classes such as Applications.

Figure 2. Classes range and domain for properties

Practically those properties are enabling the semantic aspect of ontology. This aspect makes the use of ontologies in optimization domain a highly valuable tool, since the final users will be able to extract chemical paths, networks and integrated superstructures by stating a single question.

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Planning and Assessing Clinical Simulation Using Task Analysis

Valeriy Kozmenko , ... Alan Kaye , in Clinical Simulation (Second Edition), 2019

20.2.4 Repertory Grid Analysis

In this technique, a course designer interviews a panel of experts to identify tacit knowledge that comprises an expert's knowledge base. The construct network is generated by identifying the following:

▪

a series of concepts;

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relationships between concepts;

▪

strength of the relationships; and

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clusters of concepts and relationships.

As a result of the repertory grid technique, an educator can develop a schema for a particular task. For schema theory, refer to Chapter 8, Theory for Practice: Learning Theories for Simulation, and Chapter 19, Integrating Simulation to Existing Educational Programs of this book. Review the following schema for "IV induction agents":

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IV induction agents are used to induce patients into the anesthesia state.

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IV induction agents are painless during injection, except propofol.

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IV induction agents produce respiratory depression, except ketamine.

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IV induction agents have different onset times.

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IV induction agents do not have analgesic properties, except ketamine.

▪

The effect of all induction agents is potentiated by opioids and benzodiazepines.

▪

IV induction agents could be administered as boluses or continuous IV infusions, except etomidate.

▪

IV induction agents decrease systemic blood pressure, except etomidate. Ketamine's effect on the hemodynamics depends on the patient condition.

To perform repertory grid analysis, documentation analysis and structured group interviews are used. Its results can be depicted in graphical form.

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Process Thinking and Knowledge Management

Gernot H. Gessinger , in Materials and Innovative Product Development, 2009

Three Faces of Organizations

There are three main images of an organization, depending on the combination of explicit and tacit knowledge: the mechanical machinery, the complex organism, and the dynamic network. All were products of their time, every organization includes elements of all three types.

1

The mechanical machinery. Work in an organization is divided and organized in the most effective and profitable way. Operations are directed from one place. According to this early school of thought, the most important characteristics of an organization were predictability, continuity, and manageability.

2

The complex organism. Mechanical features are not enough to describe all the phenomena in a real organization. Environment became more important to competition and change. Due to the higher level of education, firms came to realize their employees' skills as a resource for business. In this world, the organization is more like an interactive structure, reality is a living, complex system like a living organism, which easily adapts to changes internally and externally.

3

The dynamic network. The third dimension of an organization, the dynamic network, is a response to today's fast-changing environment. Organizations can be viewed as chaotic entities, full of unpredictability and thus unmanageability. The company uses the ability of chaos to organize itself. It manages the fast changes together with its close contacts: interest groups, customers, vendors, and other partners. Chaos functions as the source of innovation—and no other sources exist.

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