Turning Tacit Knowledge Tangible

People are able to determine whether or not a given document is interesting just by glancing through it. However, when asked to make explicit the rules upon which such a decision is based, they are unable to do so. This, I argue, is because tacit knowledge is involved in this process. Tacit knowledge constituted the major part of the body of knowledge and it is therefore important for organisations to sustain and exploit this asset. While studying how an intranet recommender system prototype was used, I discovered how tacit knowledge in form of professional interests could be shared among the organisational members in an unobtrusive way. Based on these empirical findings, and informed by Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge, I claim that agentbased retrieval systems can be used to capture and visualise our professional interests, thus making otherwise elusive tacit knowledge tangible for others to benefit from.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: HICSS
• Authors: Dick Stenmark
• Keywords: Biometrics, Elusive Tacit Knowledge, HICSS 2000, Professional Interests, Tacit Knowledge