Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Tacit knowledge is—by definition—knowledge that cannot be codified in words, systems, blueprints, formulas, or other explicit ways.  Unfortunately, most of the knowledge about management (in the public or private sectors) is very tacit.  This creates a problem for public managers because, as Polanyi explained, “we can know than we can tell.”  For if those public executives who possess much tacit knowledge of management—cannot “tell” it to others, how can other managers learn (and thus use) this knowledge?

Still, even if the tacit knowledge of management cannot be “told,” those who possess it can help others learn it.  Traditional strategies include formal apprenticeships and informal mentoring, with those who have mastered this knowledge help others to develop the necessary mindsets and skills.

To escape from this quandary, several scholars have suggested that organizations try to “make the tacit explicit.”  To do this, people—maybe the skilled managers themselves, maybe outside observers—would convert the tacit knowledge into rules of thumb.  They wouldn’t necessarily be official standard operating procedures.  But the if-then format would be similar:  If X, do Y.

This approach, however, is unsatisfactory.  For assuming the knowledge is indeed tacit, and thus assuming it can’t be told, it is difficult to specify either X or Y.  It is difficult to specify exactly when this explicit rule does and does not apply.  It is also difficult to specify exactly what the manager should do if it does apply.

After all, even form bureaucratic rules often contain much ambiguity:  Many circumstances will generally fit the situation described in the rule, but not precisely.  Moreover, the recommended actions will rarely be a precise fit for any specific circumstance.  (To illustrate this point, I will use the challenge difficulty faced by police when have when deciding whether or not to draw their gun, and whether or not to fire it.)

Of course, jaded bureaucrats have learned to follow any rule to the letter. This is how they stay out of trouble.  So if some subtle, tacit knowledge is, indeed, converted into an explicit if-then rule, the bureaucrat will always apply the rule.  No thinking required.  Indeed, no thinking permitted.  And if situation X requires immediate action, doing Y is even more attractive.

Moreover, once the rule is official (indeed, even if it is only framed as “guidance”), its use may be subject to litigation.  People who are unhappy with the use of explicit-knowledge rule in a specific circumstance can now seek to hold the organization responsible:  “This was clearly a dumb rule; although our circumstances generally fit the rule’s situation, the specified action clearly did not.” To minimize this problem, all rules will have to be vetted by the legal staff, ensuring that they are worded more to avoid legal liability than to achieve specific public purposes.

If the knowledge is indeed tacit, it requires numerous examples to reveal its multiple, complex, and subtle if-then relationships.  Indeed, by definition, the concept of making tactic knowledge explicit is an oxymoron.