Tacit Knowledge in Organizations

By Philippe Baumard and Samantha Wauchope

Book Overview

This landmark book delves below the surface of organizations in order to understand the complex processes of top managers' decision making.Philippe Baumard argues that the conventional, rational model of decision making ignores the tacit and intuitive processes that are often crucial in successful business outcomes. He demonstrates through his four central business cases how it is in times of uncertainty, rapid change and turbulence that the fate of companies is often determined, and it is at these times that managers' tacit knowledge and their ability to navigate ambiguous and complex situations is most critical.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076195337X
• ISBN13: 9780761953371
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Sage Publications UK
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Sydney, Australia

I refer to this book on almost a daily basis. While it can be obscure, it the most thought-provoking and well-researched book I have found in the field of organizational psychology to date. The sections on the use of tacit knowledge to usurp existing knowledge or information systems bring theory headlong against existing practices and peer practics.

A most informing insight into tacit knowledge

The process of generating knowedge is triggered off by the articulation of ambiguous, implicit insights into concepts, which are successively inscribed into more explicit and concrete forms of organizing. Such activities and practices have to do with "doing" as much as wth "knowing". Our activities are open-ended for they cannot be captured in rules, reciptives or normative models. Such insights are the forte of Philipe Baumard's book.

A significant contribution to strategic management

Philippe Baumard is seeking to stake out a distinctive domain - the use of tacit knowledge by top managers. Knowledge, especially tacit knowledge, provides sense-making frameworks within which top managers process information and make decisions. When sense-making frameworks prove ineffective - as they inevitably do in some situations - top managers misinterpret problems and they find themselves unable to generate successful actions.

The most complete study of tacit knowledge I read so far

I loved the book because I am currently struggling with a corporate program of "tacit knowledge management" and I have been looking for something precise for more than three years. Our corporation has more than 72.000 employees, and we needed very precise categories of what kind of tacit knowledge can be preserved in our organization. The book provides an amazingly precise framework, that we currently use in our company.