Archives
Book Review
Tacit Knowledge in Organisations
Philippe Baumard
ISBN: 978-0-761953-37-1 1999 272 pages Sage Publications Ltd
Stefan Haefliger
Institute of Management, University of St Gallen, Switzerland
Knowledge can be the resource of an organization or its context and boundary. Knowledge resides within an individual, between individuals or in processes. Knowledge is practice and experience. Despite certain skeptics who suspect little insight from a construct so broad, the application of knowledge management in firms has been growing rapidly for years. Philippe Baumard's book addresses a skeptic's concern by bringing light into the fog of knowledge both with its focus and exact arguments in theory, as with the direct connections to case studies. Tacit Knowledge in Organizations informs practitioners and students of knowledge in organizations, integrating the literature across scientific traditions, with a refreshing comparison of paradigms and methods.
Rather than telling success stories, Baumard focuses his analysis on firms in crisis and on turning points, where he observes how people interact within the organization as well as with the environment. While the actors often perceive the environment as the turbulent and ambiguous cause of trouble, it is during these times that the actors are often forced to call long-held beliefs regarding the organization into question. And when they do, this consciousness creates an easier access for the researcher. The book first presents the reader with theory, followed by four case studies, and then comparative theoretical conclusions from the cases. One of the advantages of this procedure lies in the depth that can be given to methodological issues often missed in shorter texts.
The discussion of how to investigate tacit knowledge finds adequate space. The author examines the idea of tacit knowledge in both management theory, exploring ideas such as sticky knowledge or know-how, and in psychological theory, exploring ideas such as perception and rationality. There are also excursions into domains such as the obstacle of self-deception and other more unusual phenomena like the anticipatory knowledge of Native Americans or wisdom in Ancient China.
This complexity could quickly lead to confusion when facing the practical cases. However, the awareness created with the theoretical background of psychological concepts actually helps the reader to understand aspects of the firms' crises. This combination of application and theory is even more remarkable, when combined with a language that refines the notion of well-known concepts such as socialization, clarifies the idea of redundancy, and adds to our understanding of communities of practice, just to mention three examples. There is also a slight downside to this theoretical precision. Where the language in the theoretical arguments is at its strongest, a difficulty appears when trying to apply it to the entire case - for example, applying the complexity of cognitive barriers, together with the distinctions between collective and individual tacit knowledge, to understanding firms in crisis. Particularly in some case studies, the ideas appear as clear instances of observation only to disappear again in the swirl of interpretations about the big picture.
The four case studies of Qantas Airways, Indigo Publications, Bank Indosuez and Pechiney introduce four companies on four continents with their detailed histories, cultures, and people. Three of the studies take the reader though long periods or decades of corporate history and the various personalities that shaped the organizations. The case of Indigo stands out with a narrower focus. Indigo, a publisher of customized newsletters, is the only small company in the sample and a successful one, whereas the other large firms with hundreds or thousands of employees are portrayed as undergoing existential crises. The level of detail and the personal flavor make the accounts excellent reading, with the unavoidable compromise of selective perception which derives from Baumard's methodology. But where, in the case of Qantas, the density of data and informants' interpretations and the researcher's subjective analysis are quite overwhelming, the same subjectivity appears as a strength in the case of Indigo. From the key informant of Indigo, the reader receives highly detailed accounts of his mode of thinking and knowledge articulation during his work as a journalist. Baumard's intimate view of the journalist's handling of an unfolding story, that includes a legal threat to his company, enables the reader to learn more about ambiguity and knowledge management than from most theory.
Theory dealing with tacit knowledge often appears complex and abstract, but applied to real life one can grasp its essence. This is little surprising, for only by studying the field, can the researcher develop the theory. And the value that theories add to mere accounts lies in the easier access they provide to understanding complex environments. In Tacit Knowledge in Organizations, Baumard presents the reader with glimpses of messy environments together with the keys to better understand them, in one book.
This comprehensive study of knowledge in organizations, tacit and explicit, individual and collective, serves not only to enlighten readers about the existing broad literature on knowledge management, but also it helps to refine, in detail, the terms and notions we use in knowledge management. These terms underlie the discussions and all novel inquiries in this field, and a better understanding helps to appreciate their discoveries and applications.
eContent Home
