Knowledge Types

Introduction

There are many types of knowledge, however, for our website's KMBOK, we will discuss the following types of knowledge:

1. Procedural and Declarative Knowledge

2. Tacit and Explicit Knowledge

3. General and Specific Knowledge and

4. Combining the above Knowledge types

Data, Information and Knowledge

What is Data?

• Collections of unprocessed facts.

• A set of discrete facts about events.

What is Information?

• Organized or meaningful data.

What is Knowledge?

• Also known as Human Capital.

• Information that is contextual, relevant and actionable.

Here's a video that can help you understand the data, information and knowledge further, and the hierarchy that these concepts form.

Knowledge and Decision Making

• Knowledge helps produce information from data

• Knowledge also creates more valuable information from less valuable information

This will facilitate making a decision.

The diagram below from Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal (2014) pg.20 illustrates the relationship between data, information and knowledge.

Example

You have an organization that creates customer profiles by collecting data from the customer and storing the data on their line of business system.

The problem that you need to solve for is to reduce the time and costs associated with creating a profile as well reducing the likelihood of human errors, whilst capturing the data which will lead to backend fulfilment costs to fix this data. You are also aware that data can be sourced from trusted third parties for South African citizens.

Using your knowledge of analysis you will be able to analyze the data captured from the customers and organize it in a meaningful manner. From the analysis it reveals the following information that 90% of your customer base are individuals and 80% of the individuals are South African citizens. This process has added more value to the data captured and provided business insights into the customer base i.e. the data has been processed and organized into information.

Your knowledge can add more value to this information by integrating into trusted third parties (such as the Department of Home Affairs) to retrieve the customer's identity information with the use of the customer's Identity Number captured and prepopulating the required customer profile fields.

By analyzing the costs and time saved by implementing this solution, this will give the decision makers the ability to steer the company into the desired state and provide benefits to the customer as well as shareholders.

Knowledge Reservoirs

Knowledge can be located in the following repositories as shown in the below diagram from Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal (2014) pg. 33:

Alternative Views of Knowledge

Knowledge can be viewed from a subjective or objective stance as shown in the diagram below Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal (2014) p.23

Subjective View of Knowledge

The subjective view, "reality is socially constructed through interactions with individuals" (Schultze 1999). The subjective view is considered from two perspectives:

1. Knowledge as a State of Mind

   • Knowledge is viewed as an individual's beliefs

2. Knowledge as Practice

   • Group's collective beliefs

   • cannot be held by individuals alone

   • knowledge resides not in anyone’s head but in practice.

Objective View of Knowledge

"The objective view is the opposite of the subjective stance whereby reality is independent of human perceptions and can be structured in terms of a priori categories and concepts" (Schultze 1999).

There are three possible perspectives namely:

1. Knowledge as objects

   • Knowledge is something that can be stored, transferred, and manipulated.

2. Knowledge as Access to Information

   • Extension of Knowledge as objects view, where knowledge is viewed here as something that enables access and utilization of information.

3. Knowledge as Capability

   • Extension of Knowledge as objects and knowledge as access to information view, where knowledge is a strategic capability that can used to create a competitive advantage.