Reading: How do we know what we know?

Crilly et al’s report highlights several ways we know what we know.

They all seem to make sense to me, and that therefore helps to explain why describing what we know and how we know it sometimes seems nigh on impossible.  The implications for making improvements in healthcare where knowledge is integrally embedded in communities of practice and ‘the way we do things around here’ are nothing if not complex.

No easy answers here…

Is learning individual, collective or absorptive?

5.2.1 Because we tell you

There’s an important connection between knowledge and power (cites Alvesson, 1993; Foucault, 1977; Kackinlay, 2000, 2002; Willmott, 1995).  Bosses can decide what knowledge exists e.g. selecting production approaches, and people may hoard knowledge – this could increase company value i.e. intellectual property – but seems to be could also be detrimental if not shared with those who could use it.

5.2.2 Because we are limited

Tsoukas & Vladimirou (2001) refer to learning through Communities of Practice where participation creates knowledge that becomes “instrumentalized” or “tacit” (p.987 cited on p.55), though this is still personal knowledge despite being gained through community.

Collins (2007) “Bicycling on the Moon” describes the ‘taken-for-granted, the unspoken and the unspeakable’ nature of tacit knowledge (p.257 cited on p.55).  Some knowledge we don’t know we have, some we choose not to express, some we could not explain if we were asked to do so.  Polyani (1958) riding a bike as an example of tacit knowledge.  We can probably demonstrate that better than explain it.  More detailed understanding is only needed if there’s a benefit to creating rules e.g. for getting a machine to do something.

But, collective tacit knowledge is irreproducible.

5.2.3 Because they create it

“As each of us interprets, uses and re-uses knowledge, we are also creating new knowledge” (Parent et al, p.84 cited on p.56) in an iterative, socially constructed process, where old knowledge and ways are disrupted by the new.

5.2.4 Because we make sense

We need to make sense of ambiguity through ‘sensemaking’ which relates to our identity and self-concept.  It is affected by past events and enacted in and through shared meanings in the environment.  It is an ongoing activity using extracted cues at speed thereby accepting plausibility over accuracy. (Probably quite a terrible summary of Williams, 2001 description of Weick’s, 1995 seven properties! P.56)

5.2.5 Because we like stories

“Narratives deal with the vicissitudes of human intentions (Bruner, 1986 in Patriotta, 2003) and access the ‘buzzing, pulsating, formless mass of signals, out of which people try to make sense, into which they attempt to introduce order, and from which they construct against a background that remains undifferentiated’ (James, 1950, cited in Czarniawska, 1998 and Patriotta, 2003, p.352).

Narrative is an epistemological form is seen as central to communities of practice, acting as carriers of tacit knowledge… Logico-scientific-deductive reasoning is polarised in debate against narrative-inductive approaches.” (p.57)

This summary and reflections was based on part of Chapter 5: Nature of knowledge and knowing from

Reading KM0001: SDO knowledge mobilisation literature review (4) Crilly T, Jashapara A, Ferlie E (2010) “Research Utilisation & knowledge mobilisation: A scoping review of the literature” Report for the National Institute for Health Research Service Delivery and Organisation programme HMSO