Empirical analysis of explicating the tacit knowledge background, challenges and experimental findings

Abstract

Tacit knowledge is undocumented knowledge, gained by an individual by virtue of his/her experience on an activity. It rests with the individual, is hard to discover, express and articulate. It is a valuable body of knowledge, hence is essential to solicit, gather and explicate, so as to facilitate its percolation to the younger generation. In this paper, characteristics of tacit knowledge, the issues and mechanisms of explicating have been presented. Seismic data interpretation, as a tacit knowledge domain has been identified, issues faced in its explication and process followed in development of explicit knowledge capsule is detailed. In order to infer the tacit knowledge sharing behavior of an individual a large approximate 5000 survey responses from participant base of individuals from IT firms, Educational Institutions, Government Organizations, Research Organization and Students Community were obtained. The validity and reliability of the measure were verified. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on received valid responses. Based on the analysis, the concrete inference was deliberated.