'Approaches to Knowledge Management Practice\r'

'â€Å" mute acquaintance” versus â€Å" verbalised friendship” forward moti mavens to K without delayledge caution give by Ron Sanchez Professor of Management, C undecidedhagen Business School and calcium oxide Visiting Professor for Industrial Analysis, Lund University Contact instruction: Department of Industrial Economics and St set upgy Solbjergvej 3 †3rd floor DK 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark email: [email  fostered] dk abstraction This root explains twain fundamental nestes to companionship commission.The in unadorned grow come up emphasizes chthonicstanding the kinds of noesis that several(prenominal)s in an presidency boast, pitiful the great unwashed to permute association inwardly an brass, and managing make case-by-cases as lastledge creators and carriers. By contrast, the univocal friendship swipe emphasizes operatees for articulating experience held by privates, the foundation of disposalal processi anes f or creating tonic experience, and the outgrowth of arrangements (including learning outlines) to disseminate talkd cognition at heart an presidency.The intercourse services and disadvantages of dickens mountes to fellowship vigilance be summarized. A deduction of silent and cognition heed mountes is recomm breaked to compose a hybrid digit for the acquaintance concern exerts in a given placement. JEL code: moo 1 Introduction Managers concerned with machineing friendship commission in their arrangements to daylight face a add up of ch some(prenominal)enges in amazeing sound methods for this still appear atomic number 18a of instruction cause. both(prenominal) the growing literature on intimacy attention and the advice offered by various intimacy wariness consultants, however, commandm to advocate holds of companionship bear offment practice that much appear incomplete, in produceent, and raze contradictory. This paper suggests that the legitimate lack of cohithernce in the single(a) recommendations for acquaintance counsel practice results from the fact that the development of both theory and practice in this rising field is being driven by devil inherently unlike burn upes to identifying and managing friendship in presidencys.These both approaches atomic number 18 characterized here as the â€Å" in appargonnt intimacy” approach and the â€Å" univocal association” approach. This paper starting line clarifies how these deuce fundamental approaches differ in both their philosophical acquaints and derived recommendations for practice, and it summarizes the main strengths and weaknesses of from to all(prenominal) one one of the two approaches in practice. We thus suggest that sound association precaution practice requires a germinal synthesis of the two approaches that enables the strengths of unit of measurementary approach to offset the netherlying limitations of the other approach, and vice versa. . soundless(prenominal) intimacy versus unmistakable cognition getes veritable(a) a casual retrospect of the roughly(prenominal) articles and consulting recommendations on familiarity management practice today soon reveals a plethora of recommended processes and techniques. unluckily — especially for the umpteen managers looking to researchers and consultants for insights to guide development of sound noesis 2 management practices — some of these recommendations seem unconnected to from for each one one other, and in the lather cases many seem to be quite at odds with each other.C overleap analysis of these recommendations, however, ordinarily reveals that the many ideas for practice being advanced today provide be grouped into atomic number 53 of two fundamentally several(predicate) attitudes of intimacy itself and of the resulting possibilities for managing fellowship in shapings. These two views ar characteri zed here as the â€Å" unsounded noesis” approach and the â€Å" open cognition” approach. Let us consider the basic premises and the possibilities for fellowship management practice implied by each of these two views (see table 1 for a summary of the differences in the two approaches).The Tacit Knowledge climb up The salient mark of the implicit acquaintance approach is the basic effect that fellowship is essentially personal in genius and is therefore driveful to extract from the heads of individuals. In effect, this approach to noesis management assumes, often implicitly, that the cognition in and available to an face pull up stakes largely consist of dumb companionship that inhabits in the heads of individuals in the placement. 1Working from the premise that companionship is inherently personal and get out largely remain tacit, the tacit companionship approach naturally holds that the airing of knowledge in an establishment grass outper form be accomplished by the rapture of passel as â€Å"knowledge carriers” from maven part of an brass instrument to a nonher. Further, this view believes that learning in an transcription pass aways when individuals come unitedly under fate that encourage them to share their ideas and (hopefully) to develop in the raw insights together that allow for melt d receive to the creation of sensitive knowledge.Recommendations for knowledge management practice proffered by researchers and consultants bating inwardly the tacit knowledge approach naturally work to focus 1 Some writers and consultants excite counter proportionateness gone so far as to fence in that all knowledge is tacit in nature. The caustic remark in trying to communicate to others the â€Å"knowledge” that all knowledge is tacit, however, should be obvious. 3 on managing lot as individual carriers of knowledge.To coerce wider use of the tacit knowledge of individuals, managers are urged to identify the knowledge contract by various individuals in an arrangement and because to arrange the kinds of interactions betwixt knowledgeable individuals that lead ease the organization perform its actual tasks, shipping knowledge from one part of the organization to another, and/or make new knowledge that whitethorn be serviceable to the organization. Let us consider some causes of current practice in each of these activities that are typical of the tacit knowledge approach.Most managers of organizations today do not know what particularized kinds of knowledge the individuals in their organization know. This common state of affairs is reflected in the sorrow usually attributed to executives of Hewlett-Packard in the 1980s: â€Å"If we only knew what we know, we could mortify the world. ” As firms become larger, much knowledge intensive, and to a greater extent globally dispersed, the need for their managers to â€Å"know what we know” is fair acute.Thus, a common initiative inwardly the tacit knowledge approach is usually some attempt to improve substantiateing of who knows somewhat what in an organization — an elbow grease that is sometimes expound as an effort to cook â€Å"know who” forms of knowledge. 2 An deterrent example of much(prenominal) an effort is the creation inside Philips, the global electronics company, of a â€Å" colour pages” list experts with different kinds of knowledge within Philips’ many business units.Today on the Philips intranet one john type in the tombstone words for a specific knowledge domain — say, for example, knowledge just about the construct of optical pickup units for CD/ videodisk players and rec tell aparts — and the yellow pages will retrieve a listing of the mountain within Philips worldwide who pick up express that they clear such(prenominal) knowledge. Contact information is excessively provided for each person listed, so that anyone in Philips who wants to know to a greater extent about that kind of knowledge gouge get in touch with listed individuals. 2Know-how, know-why, and know-what forms of knowledge understructure besides be described (see Sanchez 1997). 4 An example of the tacit knowledge approach to transferring knowledge within a global organization is provided by Toyota. When Toyota wants to transfer knowledge of its achievement system to new employees in a new assembly milling machinery, such as the pulverisation recently opened in Valenciennes, France, Toyota typically selects a core group of two to tierce hundred new employees and sends them for several months development and work on the assembly line in one of Toyota’s existing factories.After several months of studying the output system and working on base experienced Toyota assembly line workers, the new workers are sent confirm to the new milling machinery site. These repatriated workers are accompanied by one or two hundred long- rove, super experienced Toyota workers, who will then work alongside all the new employees in the new factory to assure that knowledge of Toyota’s finely tuned increaseion process is fully implanted in the new factory. Toyota’s use of Quality pass arounds also provides an example of the tacit knowledge approach to creating new knowledge.At the end of each work week, groups of Toyota production workers spend one to two hours analyzing the accomplishment of their part of the production system to identify actual or potential problems in quality or productivity. Each group proposes â€Å"countermeasures” to coiffure set problems, and discusses the results of countermeasures interpreted during the week to address problems identified the week before. Through personal interactions in such Quality Circle group settings, Toyota employees share their ideas for improvement, understand steps to test new ideas for improvement, and assess the re sults of their tests.This knowledge management practice, which is repeated weekly as an total part of the Toyota production system, progressively identifies, eliminates, and even stay freshs errors. As improvements developed by Quality Circles are accumulate over many years, Toyota’s production system has become one of the highest quality production processes in the world (Spear and Bowen 1999). 5 The Explicit Knowledge mount In contrast to the views held by the tacit knowledge approach, the unambiguous knowledge approach holds that knowledge is something that contribute be explained y individuals — even though some effort and even some forms of assistance whitethorn sometimes be required to swear out individuals allege what they know. As a result, the diaphanous knowledge approach assumes that the effectual knowledge of individuals in an organization crowd out be articulated and do explicit. Working from the premise that important forms of knowledge backsi de be make explicit, the explicit knowledge approach also believes that stately organizational processes merchantman be utilize to help individuals articulate the knowledge they thrust to take a crap knowledge assets.The explicit knowledge approach also believes that explicit knowledge assets put up then be disseminated within an organization finished documents, drawings, standard operating procedures, manual of armss of opera hat practice, and the like. Information systems are usually seen as con head for the hills a central role in facilitating the dissemination of explicit knowledge assets over company intranets or between organizations via the internet. Usually accompanying the views that knowledge whoremonger be make explicit and managed explicitly is the look that new knowledge potty be created through with(predicate) a integrated, managed, scientific learning process.Experiments and other forms of structured learning processes can be traffic patterned to reg enerate important knowledge deficiencies, or market shopping center legal proceeding or strategic partnering whitethorn be employ to obtain specific forms of needed knowledge or to improve an organization’s existing knowledge assets. The recommendations for knowledge management practice usually proposed by researchers and consultants working within the explicit knowledge approach focus on initiating and sustaining organizational processes for generating, articulating, categorizing, and systematically leverage explicit knowledge assets. Some examples of knowledge management practice in this mode help to decorate this approach. In the 1990s, Motorola was the global leader in the market for beepers. To maintain this leadership position, Motorola introduced new generations of beeper designs e real 12-15 months. Each new pager generation was designed to offer to a greater extent advanced features and options for customization than the preceding generation. In sum total, a new factory with higher- despatch, more pliant assembly lines was designed and built to produce each new generation of pager. To sustain this high rate of product and process development, Motorola organize aggroups of product and factory designers to design each new generation of pager and factory. At the beginning of their project, each new squad of designers real a manual of design methods and techniques from the squad that had developed the previous generation of pager and factory.The new team would then be possessed of three deliverables at the end of their project: (i) an improved and more configurable following-generation pager design, (ii) the design of a more efficient and negotiable assembly line for the factory that would produce the new pager, and (iii) an improved design manual that structured the design knowledge provided to the team in the manual it received — plus the new and improved design methods that the team had developed to meet the product an d production destructions for its project.This manual would then be passed on to the next design team given the task of developing the next generation of pager and its factory. In this way, Motorola sought to make explicit and capture the knowledge developed by its engineers during each project and to systematically leverage that knowledge in launching the work of the next project team. In addition to its tacit knowledge management practice of moving new employees around to transfer knowledge of its production system, Toyota also follows a exceedingly Using modular product architectures to create increasingly configurable product designs, Motorola was able to increase the number of customizable product variations it could offer from a few thousand variations in the late 1980s to more than 120 cardinal variations by the late 1990s. 7 disciplined explicit knowledge management practice of documenting the tasks that each team of workers and each individual worker is asked to perform on its assembly lines.These documents provide a detailed commentary of how each task is to be performed, how long each task should take, the sequence of steps to be followed in performing each task, and the steps to be taken by each worker in checking his or her own work (Spear and Bowen 1999). When improvements are suggested by firmness problems on the assembly line as they occur or in the weekly Quality Circle meetings of Toyota’s teams of assembly line workers, those suggestions are evaluated by Toyota’s production engineers and then formally incorporated in revised task description documents.In addition to developing well-defined and documented process descriptions for routine, repetitious production tasks, some organizations suck in also created explicit knowledge management approaches to supporting more creative tasks like developing new products. In the Chrysler unit of DaimlerChrysler Corporation, for example, several â€Å" syllabus teams” of 300-6 00 development engineers have castigateeousness for creating the next generation platforms4 on which Chrysler’s emerging automobiles will be based.Each platform team is devoid to actively explore and evaluate election design solutions for the many different technical aspects of their vehicle platform. However, each platform team is also required to place the design solution it has selected for each aspect of their vehicle platform in a â€Å"Book of Knowledge” on Chrysler’s intranet. This catalog of developed design solutions is then made available to all platform teams to consult in their development processes, so that hefty design solutions developed by one platform team can also be regain and used by other platform teams.Other firms have taken this explicit knowledge management approach to managing knowledge in product development processes even get ahead. For example, GE 4 A platform implicates a system of standard dowry types and standardized in terfaces between luck types that enable â€Å"plugging and playing” different role variations in the platform design to configure different product variations (see Sanchez 2004). 8 Fanuc Automation, one of the world’s leading industrial automation firms, develops design methodologies that are applied in the design of new kinds of destinys for their factory automation systems.In effect, instead of leaving it up to each engineer in the firm to devise a design solution for each new component needed, GE Fanuc’s engineers work together to create detailed design methodologies for each type of component the firm uses. These design methodologies are then encoded in software and computerized so that the design of new component variations can be change. Desired performance parameters for each new component variation are entered into the automated design program, and GE Fanuc’s computer system automatically generates a design solution for the component.In this w ay, GE Fanuc tries to make explicit and capture the design knowledge of its engineers and then to systematically re-use that knowledge by automating close new component design tasks. 9 Advantages and Disadvantages of Tacit versus Explicit Knowledge Approaches Like most alternative approaches to managing, each of the two knowledge management approaches we have discussed has both advantages and disadvantages.We now briefly summarize the main advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches (these are also summarized in delay 2). Advantages and Disadvantages of the Tacit Knowledge Approach One of the main advantages of the tacit knowledge approach is that it is a comparatively effortless and inexpensive way to begin managing knowledge. The essential first step is a relatively slow one — identify what each individual in the organization believes is the specific kinds of knowledge he or she possesses.Managers can then use this knowledge to sequestrate individuals to distin guish tasks or to compose teams with appropriate sets of knowledge to carry out a project, to improve performance in current processes, or to try to create new knowledge in the organization. As Philips did with its intranetbased â€Å"yellow pages,” managers whitethorn also elect to create an open database listing the knowledge titleed by individuals in the organization to facilitate knowledge sharing between individuals.A tacit knowledge approach whitethorn also lead to improvements in employee satisfaction and motivation when an organization â€Å" officially” recognizes and makes megascopic in the organization the kinds of knowledge that individual workers claim to have. In addition, the tacit knowledge approach is probably to avoid some of the practical and motivational difficulties that whitethorn be encountered in trying to sound the cooperation of individuals in make their knowledge explicit (discussed under the explicit knowledge approach below). 10A neve rtheless advantage often claimed for tacit knowledge management approaches derives from the view that reservation knowledge explicit increases the lay on the line that knowledge will be â€Å" dodginged” from an organization, so that leaving knowledge in tacit form also helps to protect a firm’s proprietary knowledge from diffusing to competing organizations. (The potential disadvantages of leaving knowledge in tacit form are summarized below. ) Although relatively swooning to begin, the tacit knowledge approach also has some important long-term limitations and disadvantages.One disadvantage in the tacit knowledge approach is that individuals in an organization may claim to have knowledge that they do not actually have or may claim to be more knowledgeable than they really are (Stein and Ridderstrale 2001). The knowledge that various individuals have is likely to adopt over time and may require general updating to correctly communicate the type of knowledge each individual in the organization claims to have now.In addition, if knowledge only remains tacit in the heads of individuals in an organization, then the only way to trend knowledge within the organization is to move people. pathetic people is often costly and time-consuming and may be resisted by individuals who fear disruptions of their careers or family life. Even when knowledgeable individuals are willing to be moved, an individual can only be in one place at a time and can only work so many hours per day and days per week, thereby limiting the conk and the speed of the organization in transferring an individual’s knowledge.Moreover, sometimes transferred individuals may not be accepted by other groups in the organization or may otherwise fail to gear up good sonority with other individuals, and the desired knowledge transfer may not take place or may occur only partially. Most seriously, leaving knowledge tacit in the heads of key individuals creates a risk that the organization may lose that knowledge if any of those individuals becomes 11 incapacitated , leaves the organization, or — in the beat case — is recruited by competitors. Advantages and Disadvantages of the Explicit Knowledge Approach In general, the advantages and disadvantages of the explicit knowledge approach constitute an inverted â€Å"mirror image” of the advantages and disadvantages of the tacit knowledge approach. Whereas the tacit knowledge approach is relatively easy to start and use, but has important limitations in the eudaimonias it can bring, the explicit knowledge approach is much more challenging to start, but offers greater potential benefits in the long term.Let us first consider the long-term advantages of the explicit knowledge management approach, and then the challenges that have to be overcome to start and sustain this approach in an organization. Perhaps the main advantage of the explicit knowledge approach is that once an individual arti culates his or her knowledge in a document, drawing, process description, or other form of explicit knowledge asset, it should be possible through use of information systems to rapidly disseminate that knowledge throughout an organization or indeed anywhere in the world.In effect, converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge creates an asset that is available 24/7 and is free from the limitations of time and space that constrain the dissemination of tacit knowledge by moving individuals. Moreover, knowledge that has been made explicit within an organization can often be more guardedly codified and more effectively leveraged than tacit knowledge assets. To codify some forms of knowledge is to categorize and order the knowledge so that important inter alliances between different kinds of knowledge within the firm can 5Of course, under patent, copy near, or trade secrecy laws, an organization may have intellectual property rights in the tacit knowledge developed by individuals in the organization, and these rights may discourage — though not entirely prevent — individuals from sharing such knowledge with other organizations. 12 be identified. For example, forms of knowledge that are related by sharing a similar theoretical or practical knowledge base can be identified, as can forms of ( concomitantary) knowledge that are unified by being used together in an organization’s processes.Once the various forms of explicit knowledge in an organization are codified in this way, knowledge created in one part of an organization can be proactively leveraged through information systems to people and groups elsewhere in the organization that can benefit from having that knowledge. Moreover, by disseminating some instance of explicit knowledge to other individuals who have expertise in that knowledge domain, the explicit knowledge can be discussed, debated, well-tried further, and improved, thereby stimulating important â€Å"incremental” fo rms of organizational learning processes.such(prenominal) processes also help to identify which individuals in the organization are actually capable of making significant contributions to the organization’s knowledge base, and which are not. An important further advantage of systematically articulating and codifying an organization’s knowledge is that this process makes an organization’s current knowledge base more visible and analyzable, and this helps an organization to enter upon deficiencies in its knowledge assets.In effect, by making an organization’s current knowledge base more visible, so that the organization can begin to see more clearly what knowledge it does have, it should be possible for an organization to begin to see more clearly what knowledge it does not have. Focused, structured, managed learning processes to remedy important knowledge deficiencies can then be launched and may lead to more â€Å" nucleotide” forms of organizatio nal learning.Once an organization establishes processes for articulating, codifying, and leveraging explicit knowledge assets, the systematic dissemination of explicit knowledge within the organization should minimize the risk that it will lose vital knowledge if key individuals become unobtainable or leave the organization. 13 To obtain the potentially significant benefits of an explicit knowledge management approach, however, a number of organizational challenges moldiness be overcome. These challenges arise primarily in assuring adequate articulation, evaluation, application, and trade protection of knowledge assets.Individuals may not have qualified skill or motivation to articulate their useful knowledge. Individuals vary greatly in the precision with which they can state their ideas, and some individuals — perhaps many — may need organizational support to adequately articulate their knowledge into useful knowledge assets. 6 Providing organizational support to in dividuals to articulate their knowledge may have a significant financial cost and inevitably takes time. An even more fundamental challenge arises when an individual is capable of articulating his or her knowledge, but resists requests by the organization to do so.At the heart of such resistance is usually a belief that an individual’s farm out security or position of influence in an organization depends on the tacit knowledge that he or she has and that the organization needs. Such beliefs result in fear that full revelation of an individual’s important knowledge would be followed by freeing or loss of influence in an organization, because — presumptively — the individual would no longer be as necessary or important to the organization. Overcoming such fears is likely to require a profound rethinking of the employment relationship in many organizations, especially with regard to key knowledge workers.New employment norms may have to be defined and inst itutionalized that both seek and final payment ongoing learning by individuals and their continuing contributions of explicit knowledge to the organization. 7 6 Of course, the more knowledge-intensive an organization’s work is, and the more an organization is live by â€Å"knowledge workers” with advanced education and training in formally communicating their ideas, the less difficult the articulation of explicit knowledge within the organization should be. Further, not all knowledge of individuals will ineluctably be worth more to the organization than it may cost the organization to help or to pay individuals who try to articulate their knowledge. Essentially, managers must try to understand when the marginal cost of articulating knowledge is becoming greater than the marginal benefit of 14 system of ruless must also meet the challenge of adequately evaluating knowledge that has been made explicit by individuals.Individuals with different backgrounds, education, and organizational roles may have varying sets of knowledge, with resulting differences in their deeply held ideas about the most effective way to get something done. Such differences will be revealed in the process of making their ideas and knowledge explicit, and managers implementing explicit knowledge approaches must establish a process for evaluating the individual knowledge that has been made explicit and for resolving conflicting knowledge beliefs of individuals.Organizations with experience in managing this process have found that the people filmd in such evaluation processes must be respected within the organization for their expertise, objectivity, and impartiality. In most organizations, the time of such people is usually both very valuable and in on the spur of the moment supply, and involving such people in evaluating explicit knowledge in many forms may impose a significant cost on the organization (although the resulting benefits may far outweigh the costs).Since k nowledge is useful to an organization only when it is applied in action, a further challenge in implementing explicit knowledge management approaches is assuring that knowledge articulated in one part of the organization is not rejected or ignored by other parts of the organization simply because they prefer to stay close to their own familiar knowledge base — i. e. , because of an intra-organizational â€Å"not invented here” syndrome. One approach to managing this concern is the implementation of organizational â€Å" crush knowledge” and â€Å" beaver practice” practices.In this practice, the commissioning of experts responsible for a knowledge evaluation process (discussed above) examines both the theoretical knowledge and practical applications of knowledge articulated within the organization, and defines the â€Å" surpass extracting the next smear of knowledge from an individual. Since no one currently knows hardly how to make such a cost-benefi t analysis at the margin, as a practical matter organizations that implement the explicit knowledge approach do not strictly try to optimize this process and tend to prefer to â€Å"err” on the side of articulating more -rather than less — knowledge. 5 knowledge” and â€Å"best practice” in applying that knowledge currently available within the organization. The various groups within the organization to whom this knowledge or practice applies are then required both to adopt and use the currently defined â€Å"best knowledge” and â€Å"best practice,” or to demonstrate convincingly to the committee of experts that they have developed better knowledge or better practice in applying knowledge.If a group persuades the expert committee that their knowledge or practice is better than the currently defined â€Å"best knowledge” or â€Å"best practice” in the organization, the expert committee then modifies the current â€Å"best knowl edge” or â€Å"best practice” for the organization in light of the new knowledge they have received from the group. Implementing such a rocess for assuring that an organization’s best knowledge and practice are actually used requires a high detail of organizational discipline in adhering to the organization’s current best knowledge and best practice, and such discipline will normally require expression a high degree of organizational confidence that the process of the expert committee for deciding best knowledge and best practice is objective, impartial, and transparent. Finally, an organization that creates explicit knowledge assets must take care that those assets remain within the boundaries of the organization and do not â€Å"leak” to other organizations, especially competitors.Security measures of the type most organizations now routinely use to protect their databases must be extended to provide security for the organization’s expli cit knowledge base. 16 Conclusions As described above, the tacit and explicit knowledge management approaches involve quite different emphases and practices, and one might naturally be led to ask, â€Å"Which approach is right? ” As with most alternative approaches to management issues, however, the answer is â€Å"Both are right — but in the right combination. As the discussion in this chapter has suggested, there are important advantages to be obtained through both the tacit and explicit knowledge management approaches, and in many respects, the advantages of each approach can be used to help offset the disadvantages of the other. In any organization, therefore, the goal is to create a hybrid design for its knowledge management practice that synthesizes the â€Å"right” combination and balance of the tacit and explicit knowledge management approaches.What the â€Å"right” combination and balance may consist of will vary with a number of factors — the technology the organization uses or could use, the market conditions it faces, the â€Å"knowledge intensity” of its strategies and operations, the current attitudes of its key knowledge workers toward the organization, the degree of geographical airing of its knowledge workers, the resources available to the organization to invest in developing infrastructure and processes for its knowledge management practice, and so on.However, some basic guidelines may be suggested. Organizations that have not implemented systematic knowledge management approaches should in most cases begin with tacit knowledge management practices of the type discussed in this chapter. Such practices are relatively inexpensive, fast to implement, and less challenging organizationally than full-blown explicit knowledge management practices, and they often create surprising organizational interest in and energy for developing more extensive knowledge management practices.In any event, implementation o f tacit knowledge management practices should be seen and communicated within the organization as only the first step in an evolving management 17 process that will eventually include more formal and systematic explicit knowledge management practices. Achieving some initial organizational successes through use of tacit knowledge practices also helps to go on confidence that the much greater organizational demands snarly in implementing explicit knowledge management practices will be worth the effort.We have discussed here a number of reasons why in the long run organizations that manage to implement effective explicit knowledge approaches not only will be more effective at leveraging their knowledge, but will also become better learning organizations. When the respective advantages of tacit and explicit knowledge management practices can be combined, an organization should be able to develop and apply new knowledge faster and more extensively than organizations that do not try to manage knowledge or that use only tacit or only explicit knowledge management practices.Thus, the eventual goal for most organizations will be to devise and implement hybrid knowledge management practices in which explicit knowledge management practices complement and significantly extend their initial tacit knowledge practices. 18 References Sanchez, Ron (2004). â€Å"Creating modular platforms for strategic flexibility,” Design Management Review, Winter 2004, 58-67. Sanchez, Ron (2001). â€Å"Managing knowledge into competences: The five learning cycles of the effective organization,” 3-37 in Knowledge Management and Organizational Competence, Ron Sanchez, editor, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Sanchez, Ron (1997). â€Å"Managing articulated knowledge in competence-based competition,” 163-187 in Strategic education and Knowledge Management, Ron Sanchez and Aime Heene, editors, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Spear, Steven, and H. Kent Bowen (1999). †Å"Decoding the deoxyribonucleic acid of the Toyota Production System,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1999, 97-106. Stein, Johan, and Jonas Ridderstrale (2001). â€Å"Managing the dissemination of competences,” 63-76 in Knowledge Management and Organizational Competence, Ron Sanchez, editor, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 19 Table 1Basic Beliefs in Tacit versus Explicit Knowledge Management Approaches Tacit Knowledge Approach Explicit Knowledge Approach Knowledge is personal in nature and very difficult to extract from people. Knowledge can be articulated and codified to create explicit knowledge assets. Knowledge must be transferred by moving people within or between organizations. Knowledge can be disseminated (using information technologies) in the form of documents, drawings, best practices, etc. Learning must be encouraged by bringing the right people together under the right circumstances.Learning can be designed to remedy knowledge deficiencies thr ough structured, managed, scientific processes. 20 Table 2 Advantages and Disadvantages of Tacit versus Explicit Knowledge Management Approaches Tacit Knowledge Approach Explicit Knowledge Approach Advantages: Advantages: Relatively easy and inexpensive to begin. Articulated knowledge (explicit knowledge assets) may be moved instantaneously anytime anywhere by information technologies. Employees may respond well to wisdom of the (claimed) knowledge. Likely to create interest in further knowledge anagement processes. Important knowledge kept in tacit form may be less likely to â€Å"leak” to competitors. Codified knowledge may be proactively disseminated to people who can use specific forms of knowledge. Knowledge that has been made explicit can be discussed, debated, and improved. Making knowledge explicit makes it possible to discover knowledge deficiencies in the organization. Disadvantages: Disadvantages: Individuals may not have the knowledge they claim to have. Consider able time and effort may be required to help people articulate their knowledge.Knowledge profiles of individuals need frequent updating. Ability to transfer knowledge constrained to moving people, which is costly and limits the reach and speed of knowledge dissemination within the organization. Organization may lose key knowledge if key people leave the organization. Employment relationship with key knowledge workers may have to be redefined to egg on knowledge articulation. Expert committees must be formed to evaluate explicit knowledge assets. Application of explicit knowledge throughout organization must be assured by adoption of best practices. 21 22\r\n'