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14 Chapter 1

Some key knowledge management attributes that continue to recur include:
• Both tacit and explicit knowledge forms are addressed; tacit knowledge ( Polanyi
1966 ) is knowledge that often resides only within individuals, knowledge that is dif-
fi cult to articulate such as expertise, know-how, tricks of the trade, and so on.
• There is a notion of added-value (the so what? of KM).
• The notion of application or use of the knowledge captured, codifi ed, and dissemi-
nated (the impact of KM).

It should be noted that a good enough or suffi cient defi nition of knowledge has been
shown to be effective (i.e., settling for good enough as opposed to optimizing; when 80
percent is done because the incremental cost of completing the remaining 20 percent
is disproportionately expensive and/or time-consuming in relation to the expected
additional benefi ts). Norman (1988 , 50 – 74) noted that knowledge might reside in two
places — in the minds of people and/or in the world. It is easy to show the faulty nature
of human knowledge and memory. For example, when typists were given caps for
typewriter keys, they could not arrange them in the proper confi guration — yet all
those typists could type rapidly and accurately. Why the apparent discrepancy between
the precision of behavior and the imprecision of knowledge? Because not all of the
knowledge required for precise behavior has to be in the mind. It can be distributed —
partly in the mind, partly in the world, and partly in the constraints of the world.
Precise behavior can thus emerge from imprecise knowledge ( Ambur 1996 ). It is for
this reason that once a satisfactory working or operational defi nition of knowledge
management has been arrived at, then a knowledge management strategy can be
confi dently tackled.
It is highly recommended that each organization undertake a concept analysis
exercise to clarify their understanding of what KM means in their own context. The
best way to do this would be to work as a group in order to achieve a shared under-
standing at the same time that a clearer conceptualization of the KM concept is
developed. Each participant can take a turn to contribute one good example of what
KM is and another example of what KM is not. The entire group can then discuss this
example/nonexample pair in order to identify one (or several) key KM attributes.
Miller ’ s (1956) magic number can be used to defi ne the optimal number of attributes
a given concept should have — namely, seven plus or minus two attributes. Once the
group feels they have covered as much ground as they are likely to, the key attributes
can be summarized in the form of a KM concept formula such as:
In our organization, knowledge management must include the following: both tacit
and explicit knowledge; a framework to measure the value of knowledge assets; a
process for managing knowledge assets . . .