Epistemological Problems Concerning Explication Of Tacit Knowledge

Abstract

Many authors in the contemporary knowledge management literature have highlighted explication of tacit knowledge as one of the most important functions of modern organizations. However, the theories stressing the importance of explication of tacit knowledge have to adopt assumptions from both Polanyi’s theory of knowledge and objectivist theory of knowledge, in which case the resulting epistemological view often remains puzzling. We analyzed the epistemological foundations of the idea of explication of tacit knowledge. We argue that the idea of explication of tacit knowledge is based on a combination of two different epistemological views that are shown to be mutually incompatible in certain significant aspects.