S M Riad Shams - Cross-Functional Knowledge Management: The International Landscape

Some authors defined knowledge as (1) a state of mind, (2) an object, (3) a process, (4) a condition of having access to information, or (5) a capability (Schubert, Lincke, & Schmid, 1998; McQueen, 1998). Specifically, as a state of mind, knowledge allows individuals to expand their personal knowledge and apply it to the organizations need (Schubert, et al., 1998). As an object, it can be viewed as something to be stored and manipulated. As a process, knowledge can be viewed as a trial of simultaneously knowing and acting (McQueen, 1998), where knowledge enables acting by applying expertise. As a condition of having access to information, the focus of knowledge is to facilitate access to and retrieval of contents (McQueen, 1998). In this case, knowledge is conceived as the capability to use information to make decisions.

Even though knowledge can be classified at the level of individuals or groups, internal or external to firm boundary, hard or soft, practical or theoretical, the most common and well-known taxonomy is the tacit vs. explicit (Nonaka, 1994; Pathirage, Amaratunga, & Haigh, 2007). Tacit knowledge, according to Mooradian (2006) and Grant (2007), is something personal, an ability, a skill to do something, which is partially based on peoples own experiences, and this is one of the key aspect of KM. Explicit knowledge can be documented, codified and shared, can be stored in digital systems and technological ways, and it is transferable. It can be achieved, collected, transformed, shared, communicated with ease and be accessible to people. This type of knowledge is typically more prevalent in organizations (Joia & Lemos, 2010; Huang, Davison, & Gu, 2011).

Tacit knowledge is difficult to be evaluated and accessed, is less familiar and it creates the background necessary for assigning the structure to interpret and improve explicit knowledge (Polanyi, 1975). Tacit knowledge is different from explicit knowledge as it is usually shared in drawings or writing. Nonaka, the father of this stream of literature, argued that knowledge is formed through the interactions of tacit and explicit knowledge (Nonaka, 1994). Snchez et al. (2012) added that very often tacit knowledge is meaningless without explicit knowledge, because both types of knowledge are complementary and essential for knowledge creation.

Knowledge can be measured in many different ways within organizations. People employed hold knowledge, known as tacit knowledge, in their minds (Davenport, De Long, & Beers, 1998). Tacit knowledge is hard for others to use, and represents knowledge that is influenced by personal experiences, which are shared when employees meet and share their knowledge in the organization. This kind of knowledge is made up of experiences, information, values and systematic attitudes that provide a proper framework for evaluation of new information and experience. New knowledge is created when employees within the organization share their own knowledge, either tacit or explicit (Hooff & Hendrix, 2004), and this is known as knowledge sharing, which is one of the main core processes beyond KM.

Nowadays, the tacit-explicit knowledge classification has become too superficial, because there are many other classifications of knowledge that try to identify useful distinctive knowledge in organizations with a more pragmatic approach. Examples include knowledge about competitors, heuristics rules, products, processes, customers etc. Different authors (Alavi & Leidner, 2001) coined some very famous types of knowledge.

• Individual: knowledge made and deep-seated in the individual;
• Social: knowledge made and deep-seated in the collective group and their actions;
• Declarative: know-about;
• Procedural: know-how;
• Causal: know-why;
• Conditional: know-when;
• Relational: know-with;
• Pragmatic: the essential knowledge for organizations.

The interest in KM has increased over time, becoming a relevant issue in the late 1980s. KM is a way for organizations to take care of all the existing knowledge within the organization. However, the definition of knowledge management is not easy to identify. Today, we still have the tendency to use the term knowledge to describe information systems and databases. In reality, more attention is paid to technological infrastructures that allow the passage of information rather than real knowledge and the transfer of it between people (Nonaka, 1994).