Group: MIM-SUMMER (Ashwini, Dick, Eleanor, Kai, Holger)
Rooney, D. & Schneider, U. (2005). A Model of the Material, Mental, Historical and Social Character of Knowledge. In Rooney, Hearn & Ninan (eds). Handbook on the Knowledge Economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 19-36.
Summary
Rooney and Schneider provide an extensive overview of what the concept of knowledge actually means, and in particular what ‘knowing’ entails. The focus is on what tacit knowledge is and how ‘enigmatic and messy’ it is. (p. 19) Their overview draws on research from the sociology of knowledge (that knowledge is socially constructed and articulated), the psychology of consciousness (how we came to know things from an evolutionary perspective), research into learning (specifically how knowledge can be declarative or procedural), and intuition (how we can form ‘relationships between different sets of ideas’). Put into this context, the act of knowing becomes something deeply human and deeply cultural.
The focus of explicit knowledge also shifts within this context. Here the importance is its ability to communicate something: ‘It is not the degree of codification which is significant, but, rather, the degree to which an idea is explained or made explicit’ (p. 22). So the focus is here on what happens when a person ‘reads’ the code, rather than on the code itself. The concept of knowledge’s communicability is dependent on a person’s ability to understand the code, and this is dependent on such factors as shared understandings, context and background. The final transformation of the knowledge comes when it is enacted by another person. The authors stress that this also takes place in a contextualized and individual way: the reenactment of the knowledge is never identical as the original ‘knower’s’ enactment, as: ’different people in different parts of social systems, having different vested interests and power, and experience different rewards and frustrations’ (p. 31).
Review
This is a heavy, academic article with much technical referencing to philosophy and sociology. Its strength is that it leaves you with an overall appreciation of how knowing is not a simple process; rather it is as individual as the wiring of a person’s mind and is inseparable with their cultural context and belief system. There are many very quotable excerpts, which illustrate complex points well. As primarily being concerned with the goal of describing knowledge there are no suggestions on how these definitions can be put into practice with the job of KM in an organizational context. This is not what the authors set out to do. The focus is also clearly on tacit knowledge as this is what the authors believe true knowledge is. For more understanding on explicit knowledge, it would be better to look elsewhere.
