Cracking the Code: the Dynamics of Professional Knowledge

Dimensions such as tacit-explicit and personalised-codified have been suggested as vehicles to understand the dynamics of knowledge in the context of professional work. The conventional wisdom is that these underlying perspectives on knowledge are alternatives, inviting either a focus on tacit-explicit or on personalised-codified knowledge. In addition however, the terms ‘explicit’ and ‘codified’ tend to be used interchangeably. Here we argue that explicit and codified knowledge focus on distinct and different aspects of professional work and these underlying perspectives should be seen as complementary rather than competing. As a consequence we need to critically rethink the role of codification in knowledge management and on that basis review our understanding of the dynamics of professional knowledge. Drawing upon insights from the systems development profession we propose to distinguish between tacit and explicit knowledge and between informal and codified knowledge as two complementary dimensions of knowledge. This leads to four distinct archetypes of professional knowledge procedural, community, exemplary, and situated knowledge – and as a consequence to a revised perception of the dynamics involved in knowledge conversion from one type to another. The paper concludes with a critique of the conventional wisdom on knowledge management and with a discussion of the implications of our argument for both research and practice. Lars Mathiassen GRA Eminent Scholar and Professor of Digital Commerce Director, Center for Digital Commerce eCommerce Institute J. Mack Robinson College of Business Georgia State University PO Box 5029 Atlanta GA 30302-4015 Tel: +1-404-651-0933 Fax: +1-404-463-9292 e-mail: [email protected] Maxine Robertson & Jacky Swan IKON Research Centre Warwick Business School University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL United Kingdom Tel: +44 24 7652 2457 Fax: +44 24 7652 4656 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected]