Abstract:
Nonaka and Takeuchi’s highly influential account of tacit–explicit knowledge-conversion
in Japan’s knowledge-creating companies has been instrumental in Knowledge
Management’s institutionalisation of Michael Polanyi’s distinction between ‘tacit knowledge’
and ‘explicit knowledge’. But tacit knowledge has been misunderstood and what Nonaka and
Takeuchi claim in the name of explicit knowledge does not make sense. Whereas Polanyi was
concerned with the discovery of absolute truth about ontological reality, Nonaka and his
colleagues insist that truth is ‘in the eye of the beholder’. Yet, Nonaka et al.’s implicit nihilism
seems to have gone unnoticed. Many people talk about explicit knowledge as if it existed on a
par with scientific knowledge: a tangible commodity that is ‘as real as rocks’. Arguably,
Nonaka and Takeuchi have offered a ‘lesson from Japan’ that has distorted Polanyi’s concept
of tacit knowing, inspired unwarranted faith in the viability of ‘explicit knowledge’, and
ignored the significance of power mediated by ‘high-context’ communication. This paper uses
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s work on radical constructivism to make sense of Polanyi’s insights into
tacit knowing without invoking notions of metaphysical truth. With reference to knowing,
learning and communicating in Japanese organisations, we suggest that a radical constructivist
approach offers a viable alternative to Nonaka and Takeuchi’s knowledge-conversion
model.
