(Clark, 1997) in their models. Dynamic systems theorists would disagree for although they too agree that knowledge is emergent they see the organism- in-environment as the relevant system, not the organism-bound-by-its-skin, thus resurrecting an important methodological issue first raised in the 1940s (Bentley, 1954a). In their concern for ongoing activity, connectionists and dynamicists, along with situationists, seem to have overlooked the role of abstracted formalized representations in knowing and knowledge transfer (Clark, 1997; Bereiter, 2002). If, on the other hand, we regard these as artifacts that mediate the generation or construction of “knowledge,” as is implied above (see also Whitson, 1997; Gherardi & Nicolini, 2000; Wilson, 2002) then we can incorporate knowledge as communicable mappings into these models.
This further implies that talk of focusing on knowledge as process (e.g., Blackler, 2002; Clancey, 1997a, b) rather than knowledge as object is really beside the point. Instead we should follow Cook and Brown’s suggestion, to regard the “possession” and “practice” epistemologies as mutually interacting and their interplay as a “generative” phenomenon (1999, p. 383). But we need to move beyond metaphors to explore ways of conceptualizing these in a single framework that also points toward how we might study these processes. The following framework attempts to do this.
important to note that Dewey did not intend that non-reflectional experiences were unconscious, or even that they were devoid of reflection. He remarked of a non-reflective experience like being ill: “it is quite possible that what makes an illness into a conscious experience is precisely the intellectual elements which intervene—a certain taking of some things as representative of other things”
(Dewey, [1916], pp. 3–4). Non-reflectional experience thus comprises both non- conscious and conscious aspects, and some degree of reflection.
Reflective experiences involve “intellectual knowing” (Dewey, [1916], fn 1, p. 10) which are not merely cerebral or armchair affairs, but experiences in which “the controlling interest” is experimentation and action in the world with a view to establishing and communicating beliefs about some aspect of that world (Dewey, [1916], pp. 10, 13–14). Implicitly, reflective experiences entail suspending non-reflectional experience vis-a-vis that part of the world being acted on.
Dewey compared non-reflectional and reflective experiences as follows:
all intellectual knowing is but a method for conducting an experiment. . .The importance attached to the word “experience,”. . .is to be understood as an invitation to employ thought and discriminative knowledge as a means of plunging into something which no argument and no term can express; or rather. . .no plunge is needed, since one’s own thinking and explicit knowledge are already constituted by and within something which does not need to be expressed or made explicit.. . .there is nothing mystical about
this. . .Its import is only to call notice to the meaning of, say, formulae
communicated by a chemist to others as the result of his experiment.
All that can be communicated or expressed is that one believes such and such a thing.. . .The word “experience” is,. . .a notation of an inexpressible as that which decides the ultimate status of all which is expressed; inexpressible not because it is so remote and transcendent, but because it is so immediately engrossing and matter of course.
(Dewey [1916], fn1, p. 10).
Reflective experiences take place against a ground of non-reflectional experiences that are the “immediately engrossing” aspects ofthatexperience and can result in the expression of beliefs about some selected state of the world in socially generated and sanctioned symbolic forms: the chemist’s formula and other communicable mappings (Holzner, 1972). Reading this through Polanyian eyes we might be tempted to recruit Dewey to the cause of tacit knowledge. However, it is important to note that Dewey does not find it necessary to claim that what is immediately engrossing must be underlain by some other kind of knowledge or knowing process. Rather, as his references to skill and innate behaviors indicate, he regards this as a natural phenomenon, the combined result of how human beings have evolved, and the natural history of each individual.
Dewey was in effect proposing a dual level model of human behavior. The idea that behavior is effected by both automatic and controlled processing has been a theme in psychology since the late 1890s (which Dewey’s ideas perhaps reflected), and the focus of a prominent research program since the 1970s (Schneider & Chein, 2003; see also Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Iverson &
Thelen, 1999). As we have seen, motor skills research appears to find dual-level models of motor control fruitful (Abernethy & Sparrow, 2002).
The very obviousness of this assumption (Dewey, 1916, p. 2), and thus its implications, had been, and continues to be, overlooked, especially as regards
“knowledge.” Writing of philosophy, Dewey suggested that professional philosophers had made a fundamental mistake beginning their analysis with the results of reflective experience. Failing to find its qualities in non- reflectional experience, they declared the latter inferior, and the former superior, thus setting up the problem of the relations between them (Dewey, [1916], pp. 2–8). This is evident in Polanyi’s arguments about tacit knowledge.
Rejecting accounts of science that represented it as a wholly intellectual activity, Polanyi emphasized the grounding of scientists’ activities in behaviors they could not articulate, and suggested this characterized all behavior. Dewey turned the classical position on its head, insisting we should start from ordinary experience if we are to understand the relations between the two aspects of behavior.
Dewey’s methodological suggestion presages that made by Schutz, who argued that to understand human behavior we must begin with what seems self-evident to people, with the “everyday life-world” (Schutz & Luckmann, 1974, p. 3). There are a number of similarities between Dewey and Schutz (Webb, 1976). Schutz and Luckmann, for example, described the everyday life-world as “that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult simply takes for granted” wherein they take “the natural attitude”
(Schutz & Luckmann, 1974, p. 3) which clearly parallels Dewey’s notion of non-reflectional experience. Other related notions include Argyris and Sch¨on’s (1974) notion of single-loop learning; normal science (Kuhn, 1970);
habitus (Bourdieu, 1977), and schema (Strauss & Quinn, 1997). Reflection, according to Dewey, arises when there are difficulties in the situation that require explicit attention in order to devise further actions (Dewey, [1916], pp. 11–12). Reflective experience thus goes beyond the attentiveness of “the natural attitude” and is probably analogous to double-loop learning (Argyris and Sch¨on, 1974) wherein everyday commonsense assumptions are open to question and there can even be reflection on reflection (Sch¨on, 1983).
Before concluding that we could replace tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge with non-reflectional and reflective experiences we need to attend to some terminological issues, and clarify the distinctiveness of the latter concepts. “Experience” is a complex and ambiguous concept (Webb, 1976;
Burke, 1994, pp. 96–104) although whatever the difficulties, compared with
“knowledge,” it has the methodological advantage of directing attention to acting in the world, as well as to the accompanying phenomenological
experience. Dewey later proposed replacing experience with “culture” in its anthropological sense (Dewey, 1981, pp. 361–2), but since anthropologists can no longer agree on the meaning of culture (Strauss & Quinn, 1997) that would not resolve the problem. Dewey’s “experience” was clearly intended to indicate ordinary acting in the world in all its simplicity, and complexity (Dewey, 1916, pp. 4–8) and I propose here to use the word “activity” in its place. (“Behavior”
too would also suffice, but the word still carries the scars of its treatment at the hands of behaviorists, and would thus be likely to mislead). Activity is at once a vague enough term that nevertheless indicates clearly we are concerned with people doing things, and it is a critical term in activity theory (Engestr¨om, 1993, 1999; Blackler, 1993; 2002). In turn, activity theory’s descriptive model relating people, tools, and objects of attention to contexts comprising others engaged in similar activities (community), rules, and a social division of labor is consistent with Dewey’s emphasis and, for example, the transactional theory of reading. Activity theory’s framework also helps draw attention to what still needs to be stressed—that all human endeavors take place in contexts or situations, and are thus situationally determined.
Calling an experience “non-reflectional” appears to exclude reflection, which is not what Dewey intended. Shutz’ phrase, “everyday life-world,”
appears to signify his intentions better but also implies the chief distinction is between “everyday” life, and other more specialized activities. We need a term that allows us to recognize that activities like scientific work also have their own “natural attitude” as students of scientific work have made clear (Collins, 1974, 2001a). I propose to refer to non-reflectional experiences, or everyday life-world behaviors asroutine activity. Routine activity encompasses automatic, unconscious behaviors due to whatever source (tacit knowledge phenomena) and awake normal behavior, including reflection which here, implicitly is conducted within the typical frames of reference or schemas (the “natural attitude”) of an individual, group, or society (Strauss & Quinn, 1997). It is normal science, to use Kuhn’s phrase (Kuhn, 1970) provided we extend “science” to cover all kinds of activity.
Reflective experience seems less open to misinterpretation (provided we recall that it is not merely cerebral, but involves activity in and on the world), but still retains that difficult term “experience.” I propose to use reflective activity since this makes this a species of activity and hence links it to the wider more general term. “Reflective” emphasizes the idea that this activity involves isolation and examination of some part of normal routine activity; a suspension of the “natural attitude” with respect tosomelimited aspect of normal activity, largely with a view to generating a communicable representation or mapping of that aspect. The purpose of reflective activity, as Dewey emphasized, is to complete specific tasks set by problems arising in a related routine activity, thus ultimately enabling that routine to be resumed (Dewey, [1916], pp. 12–15).
Posing the question in terms of routine activity and reflective activity might seduce us, given our “natural attitude” of dualistic thought, into seeing
these as distinct and even opposed categories. Dewey indicated that non- reflectional/reflective experience forms a continuum; they are not simply opposite or polar categories (Dewey, 1916 fn 1, p. 10; 2–14). Indeed, he suggested that it was a consequence of having started our inquiries from the products of reflective activities that we had lost sight of the continuity of experience/activity as a whole (Dewey, [1916], pp. 4–5). However, this is a unusual continuum in so far as reflective experience is “subsequent”
to a non-reflective experience, and is instrumental to continuing with the latter (Dewey, [1916], pp. 4, 12). Hence in a sense non-reflectional experience
“contains” reflective experience. This is also implicit in the earlier quotation comparing reflective and non-reflectional experiences: “experience” in general is just “there”; it is what constitutes thinking and explicit knowledge; it is “immediately engrossing and matter of course,” and the meaning of reflective experiences is grounded in such experience in general (Dewey, [1916], fn 1, p. 10).
The ecological system metaphor, very familiar by the late 20thcentury, but not outlined until the 1920s (Von Bertalanffy, 1973), would perhaps be more appropriate than the metaphor of a continuum. Thus a specific experience, such as reflective experience, should be considered as “nested” within a wider, non-reflectional, experience. Furthermore, just as non-reflectional experience in general has an unconscious “base” of implicitly structured automatic behaviors and a conscious “superstructure” wherein actors are reflecting in a limited way on their actions, so too does each specific experience. A highly systematic reflective activity, such as the work of scientists, also rests on the assumptions of normal science, as well as unarticulated assumptions and even critical but unrecognized practices. The system metaphor would also be appropriate since von Bertalanffy later endorsed Deweyian concepts like “transaction” as a system concepts (Von Bertalanffy, 1973, p. 40;
Bentley, 1954b).
It might be objected that, apart from suggesting the system metaphor, all I have done is to substitute routine activity for tacit knowledge, and reflective activity for explicit knowledge. If this were all, it might not amount to much, although replacing “knowledge” with “activity” implicitly makes studying knowledge/knowing processes easier since it directs our attention to something observable. Moreover, we have many techniques to study these processes at levels from the neurological to the sociological. More important, however, it might be argued that, on the assumption that overt observable activities must be underpinned by knowledge, that tacit knowledge is still involved, underpinning routine activity.
As Pleasants (1996, p. 249) so succinctly put it, “tacit knowledge” is
“explanatorily empty.” Having observed that someone can ride a bicycle, speak a language, or behave correctly in specific situations, we have simply redescribed that behavior as the effect of a hidden process, tacit knowledge.
Invoking an unobservable to explain an observable in this way is as useful as claiming that opium works because it has the power of making people
sleep (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 101, n. 49 referring to Moli`ere’sLe malade imaginaire). Indeed, the idea that people, particularly scientists, possess special powers is central to Polanyi’s thought about tacit knowing/knowledge (1969a, p. 133; 1969d, p. 173), and implicitly, to all theses about tacit knowledge.
The problem here lies in the mode of “explanation.” Explaining observable events in terms of underlying intrinsic powers or characteristics is an ancient mode of explanation (Dewey & Bentley, 1949). It is deep-rooted in our culture (Gottfried & Gelman, 2005) suggesting it has a psychological and/or cultural origin. In 19thcentury psychology, “faculties of mind” were invoked to explain until it was pointed out that such “explanations” were spurious as they classified and explained behavior in the same terms (Bechtel & Richardson, 1993, p. 98; Reed, 1997). In biology, vitalists invoked the notion of “life force”
that too has since been abandoned because it explains nothing (Jacob, 1993;
Mayr, 1988, pp. 12–13).
Postulating something that has not been observed to explain observable phenomena is in the traditions of good science but all too often, as is the case with tacit knowledge, this can lead to explanatory and methodological dead ends, choking off inquiry. Assuming that we are here engaged in something akin to scientific inquiry, such notions are of little or no use. “Tacit knowledge”
is a term that belongs to past commonsense or folk attempts to understand behavior and in so far as studies of automaticity, implicit learning, and their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms appear able to manage well without such a notion, so too can management studies.
So far I have argued that Dewey, and others, give us good grounds for adopting a multi-level, ecological systems-type perspective to conceptualize the distinction and relations between what have hitherto been misleadingly called tacit and explicit knowledge. It is evident thatroutine activity(Dewey’s non-reflectional experience, and Schutz’ natural attitude) encompasses all the phenomena discussed earlier as tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is typically viewed a possession, but can also be seen as emergent in the situation.
Emergent knowledge, however, is also used to refer to verbal expressions of knowing in a situation, to explicit knowledge in common parlance, and is also included in routine activity.
On the other hand, we have reflective activities which typically involve suspending belief in some aspects of the natural attitude (while themselves still being grounded in the “natural attitude” of the specific reflective experience). These are usually conducted with a view to tackling some problem arising in routine activity, their immediate result being the production of communicable representations of beliefs about such and such state of the world as guides to resuming or correcting routine activity. The question of the relationship of knowledge as process/tacit knowledge to knowledge as object/explicit knowledge can thus be replaced by the more tractable one of the relations between routine and reflective activities, which
will enable us to deal more effectively with many of the central issues that concern knowledge management.
In order to suggest how routine and reflective activities are related in a way that throws light on some of these important problems of knowledge management, we need to introduce further terms to distinguish phases of activities. This draws on the work of Clancey who proposed that central to activity is “improvisation-in-action” (1997a): the actor simply gets on with whatever the activity is. Given ideal conditions, an activity may proceed from beginning to end entirely as continued improvisation, in this sense.
Improvisation is not intended to suggest making things up, but rather that what it necessary to know to carry out the activity becomes known seamlessly with acting—“what one needs to know to behave appropriately becomes a product of behaving” (Keller & Keller, 1993, p. 141). Knowledge is “dynamically constructed as we conceive of what is happening to us, speak, and move” (Clancey 1997b:7); knowing occurs in the process of acting (Sierhuis & Clancey, 1997).
If there is some difficulty in conditions attending the improvisation, this is suspended. In order to continue the activity, intermediate steps have to intervene to identify the cause of the hitch, and decide what to do to either resume or to abandon the interrupted improvisation. Keller and Keller’s account of craft blacksmithing illustrate this clearly. They describe how, given an overall objective and plan to make something, “each step of the way, constellations, microorganizations of task conception and material conditions, are developed in the act of production. . .” (Keller & Keller, 1993, p. 135). These “microorganizations” may be no more than a fleeting pause in improvising to grab a new tool not included in the inventory to hand, a minor flow in the action perhaps not even consciously registered by the actor. This suggests that we can analytically distinguish three aspects of any activity: improvising, reflecting, and deciding. Such “reflecting” involves no radical departure from the central activity; no break in the frames of reference within which the activity as a whole is carried on. If reflecting is to lead back to improvised action, this implies some conclusion was reached, and a decision to act was taken, hence deciding as a third aspect of activity. Figure 1, below, suggests graphically how routine and reflective activities are carried on and related.
All human actions take place in time and space, a truism that should not need stating except that, at least in management studies, models of behavior sometimes overlook these constraints. The time and space implied by improvising in action are a continuous uninterrupted time in a contiguous space, most likely experienced by the actor as “flow” because of the neuro- cognitive processes involved (Dietrich, 2004). The time taken to complete a whole activity may be broken into segments, just as the space occupied by the activity may also be fragmented. The whole process of making an iron tool described by Keller and Keller (1993) involved several phases. The project was to make a replica iron tool for a museum, but since they were concerned with
routine activity
reflective activity improvising
improvising deciding
deciding reflecting
reflecting
Fig. 1. Routine and reflective activity
authenticity, and not having made this particular tool before, the activity began with phase of reflective activity (consulting catalogues, descriptions, and examples of authentic tools). These implicitly occupied various places, and took place over several phases of time. Once completed, an “umbrella plan” of the activity of making the replica could be made. Since one of the authors was an experienced smith, further extensive reflective activity was not required. The replica could be made in a relatively uninterrupted phase or set of phases of improvisation in action (Keller & Keller, 1993, pp. 129–135).
It is now evident that, in certain circumstances, the three phases of routine activity can to a degree become activities in their own right, disassociated in varying degrees from the activity they refer to. Research into what the original tools Keller made could have been carried out by someone else. It might already have been done, and all Keller had to do would be to read the resulting document. Planning too could be carried out by someone else, as we proceed to implement a division of labor around what was previously a unified set of tasks. That this kind of thing has happened is all too evident from the history of work over the last few hundred years or more.
A reflective activity of course has its own phases of improvisation, reflection, and planning. The process of generation of separated reflective