Tacit knowledge has often been misunderstood in management studies, largely because of the tacitly (!) accepted cognitivist framework and the associated conduit metaphor of communication adopted by researchers. While Nonaka and Takeuchi were among the first to see the enormous importance of tacit knowledge in organizations and systematically explore it, their interpretation of tacit knowledge as knowledge-not-yet-symbolically-represented—namely, knowledge awaiting its ‘translation’ or ‘conversion’ into explicit knowledge—an interpretation that has been widely adopted in management studies, is erroneous: it ignores the essential ineffability of tacit knowledge, thus reducing it to what can be formulated in rules.
I have argued here that tacit and explicit knowledge are not the two ends of a continuum but two sides of the same coin: even the most explicit kind of knowledge is underlain by tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge consists of a set of particulars of which we are subsidiarily aware as we focus on something else. Tacit knowing is vectorial: we know the particulars by relying on our awareness of them for attending to something else. Since subsidiaries exist as such by bearing on the focus to which we are attending from them, they cannot be separated from the focus and examined independently, for if this is done, their meaning will be lost. While we can certainly focus on particulars, we cannot do so in the same context of action (the inarticulate background) in which we are subsidiarily aware of them. Moreover, by focusing on particulars after a particular action has been performed, we are not focusing on them as they bear on the original focus of action, for their meaning is necessarily derived from their connection to that focus. When we focus on particulars we do so in a new context of action (a new inarticulate background), brought about by a temporary breakdown. Thus, the idea that somehow one can focus on a set of particulars and convert them into explicit knowledge is unsustainable.
The ineffability of tacit knowledge does not mean that we cannot discuss the skilled performances in which we are involved. We can—indeed, should—discuss them, provided we stop insisting on ‘converting’ tacit knowledge and, instead, start recursively drawing our attention to how we draw each other’s attention to things. Dialogical interactions help us re-orientate ourselves to how we relate to others and the world around us, thus enabling us to talk and act differently. We can command a clearer view of our tasks at hand if we ‘re-mind’ ourselves of how we do things so that distinctions which we had previously not noticed, and features which had previously escaped our attention, may be brought forward. Contrary to what some scholars suggest (Ambrosini and Bowman, 2001; Sternberg et al., 2000), we do not so much need to operationalize tacit knowledge (as explained earlier, we could not do this, even if we wanted to) as to find new ways of talking, fresh forms of interacting, and novel ways of distinguishing and connecting. Tacit knowledge cannot be ‘captured,’ ‘translated,’ or ‘converted’ but displayed—manifested—in what we do. New knowledge comes about not when the tacit is converted to explicit, but when tacit knowledge is re-punctuated (articulated) through dialogical interaction.
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