Tacit Knowledge And Explicit Knowledge (EK)

The debate is necessary to grasp the idea of Tacit Knowledge (TK) and Explicit Knowledge (EK); moreover it provides the insight why TK sharing is important for strategic marketing decisions. Knowledge has a number of dimensions, but research suggests the two basic dimensions of knowledge, namely:

i. Explicit Knowledge (can be expressed in words and numbers, easy to capture, easy to codify, documented and easily distributed and share). ii. Tacit knowledge (embedded in the mind of people; hard to articulate, capture, codify and share because of personal nature of knowledge).

Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) established a “Knowledge Conversion” model that deals with explicit and tacit knowledge interacts in the human beings; presented in four steps;

Knowledge is considered as an important resource of an organization and TK is an intangible resource (Ambrosini and Bowman, 2001). According to Alavi and Leidner (2001) knowledge may be tacit or explicit; it may reside in individuals, groups, documents, processes, policies, or computer repositories. Minna and Aino (2005), remark that CK can be explicit (the structured customer information in databases) or in tacit (knowledge in the mind of employees and customers). Others define it, Knowledge has both implicit and explicit dimension (Mohamed et al. 2006; Klein, 2008).

From the critical review of literature it has been found that different renowned scholars of this domain have diverse opinion about the TK and raise three important questions associated with the TK that must be answered: (i) TK is a type or a dimension and is it associated with the individuals or groups? (ii) Can it be articulated or not i.e. whether it can be made Explicit? (iii) How it can be

Nonaka and Takeuchi have different opinion regarding the TK as compared to Polanyi. They consider EK and TK are two separate types of knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Similarly Cook and Brown (1999) agree with Nonaka and Takeuchi consider that EK and TK are two distinct forms of knowledge. Conversely, Polanyi argues, as all knowledge is TK rooted so TK is not a separate category but a dimension and it should not be viewed as the types of knowledge (Polanyi, 1966). With support of that, Tsoukas and McAdam with his colleagues agree that EK and TK are not the types of knowledge but the dimensions (Tsoukas, 2003; McAdam et al. 2007). Polanyi considers TK as personal nature of knowledge associated with the individuals. Similarly, Von-Krogh and Roos (1995) argue that it is wholly a trait of individuals, whereas, Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) consider it an attribute associated in both individual and