The nature of the relationship between experience and the acquisition of tacit knowledge has never been fully established. Furthermore, there is only very limited understanding of why differences in level and content of tacit knowledge occur across individuals who appear to have similar abilities. The results of this study have provided further evidence that tacit knowledge is independent of the length of peoples general work experience, but closely associated with matching work functions to the work context. Results also suggest that tacit knowledge acquired through experiential learning may be influenced by managers’ individual learning styles, and the degree to which these are consonant with the work context. Outcomes of the study have a range of implications for theory, management education, management development, and future research in these areas as follows.
Most previous empirical research associated with managerial tacit knowledge has focused on building new theory about its role in predicting performance (Argyris, 1999; Forsythe et al, 1998). There has been a dearth of studies that address reasons for individual variations in the ability to learn from experience (Reuber et al, 1990). Colonier-Willner (1998) identified this as a particularly important area of future research, especially reasons why expert
managers acquire more tacit knowledge than others even though their intellectual abilities and general work experiences may sometimes be similar. The present study has demonstrated that learning styles provide one explanation and may be a particularly fertile area for future
investigation. Some ideas for further research are discussed below. Commensurate with this study, future ones should consider using a normative version of the Learning Styles Inventory due to limitations of the ipsative version highlighted earlier. The inventory used in this study allowed both the dominant style, and strength of preference for each style to be measured without compromising the psychometric properties underlying Kolb’s experiential learning theory.
With regard to management education, an important question that needs to be addressed is how to facilitate the acquisition of managerial tacit knowledge if this is one of the most important factors distinguishing successful managers from others? Evidence suggests that most learning to manage occurs on the job (Cunningham & Dawes 1997) in tacit, culturally embedded ways through peoples’ work practices within organizations. How then, can management educators substitute for such learning when formal education programs continue to separate learning from practice? One way is to blend formal approaches with informal learning that takes place in work-based problem scenarios. Service learning approaches (Kenworthy-U’Ren & Peterson, 2005) designed to shift the emphasis from didactic learning
in a classroom to learning through participation in social practice in the workplace is one example of where real world problems and real world needs are dealt with in the context of learning. A wide variety of action learning approaches are also available (Raelin, 1999) where problems are used as a stimulus and focus for student activity (Boud & Feletti, 1991). On the basis that the present study confirmed the context dependent nature of tacit knowledge (Gottfredson, 2003; Choo, 1998) these approaches may benefit from more deliberate attempts to closely match learning experiences with situations that are consonant with the specific management context being considered. Such approaches would increase the probability of developing what Schon (1991) described as ‘honed intuition’ or what Fukami (2007) referred to as ‘practical wisdom’. This derives from her discussion of three knowledge types
associated with organizational wisdom where she referred to ‘episteme’ as being theoretical knowledge of the sort typically dispensed in the classroom, ‘techne’ as the knowledge of making, associated with a craftsperson, and ‘phronesis’ which is thought of as ‘practical wisdom’. She described the latter as “the ability to interpret and adapt knowledge to a particular context, situation, or problem” (p4). This has close connotations with tacit knowledge referred to in this article.
The present study also demonstrated that a consideration of learning styles may be beneficial in facilitating learning in a management development context. Levels of managerial tacit knowledge were higher when subjects’ learning styles were matched with discipline demands and lower among those whose learning styles were incongruent with their discipline norms. In relation to management training this may explain why people with similar abilities
experience more learning difficulties than others. This opens up the possibility suggested by Rush & Moore (1991) of restructuring training and modifying instructional treatments and strategies as a means of addressing individual learner differences.
An interesting alternative to matching training to the styles of the trainee would be to expose learners to a mis-matched learning environment in order to help them develop a wider repertoire of coping behaviours and learning strategies. Those that can learn to use a variety of problem solving and learning strategies, and apply them in situations that do not match with their natural learning style, “may be more able to perform effectively across a wider range of situations than employees who have limited stylistic versatility” (Hayes & Allinson, 1996, p71). Kolb (1984) also acknowledged the potential longer term value of intentionally mismatching to increase adaptability, help learners overcome weaknesses in their learning style, and develop a more integrated approach to learning. The viability of this depends to some extent on whether learning styles are stable or open to change. Recent thinking in this area suggests that unlike cognitive personality styles, learning styles can be modified to a degree through learning and training strategies (Armstrong, 2006; Curry, 2000).
Increasing learner adaptability was identified by Kolb et al (2000) as an important new direction in experiential learning theory. They suggest a move from research that examines conditions of extreme learning specialisation to empirical testing of a theoretical proposition with regard to integrated learning. This is conceptualized as “an idealized learning cycle or spiral where the learner ‘touches all the bases’ – experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting – in a recursive process that is responsive to the learning situation and what is being learned” (Op-cit, p22). They refer to three orders of learning styles. The first refers to the specialised learning styles of Diverging, Assimilating, Converging and Accommodating. Second order learning styles represent learning orientations that combine the abilities of two basic learning styles. They present the concept of the ‘Northener’ learning style which combines the characteristics and abilities of the Diverging and Accommodating basic styles referred to in
Figure 2. The ‘Easterner’ learning style combines the characteristics and abilities of the Diverging and Assimilator basic styles. The ‘Southerner’ learning style combines elements from the Assimilating and Converging basic styles and the ‘Westerner’ learning style combines those of the Converging and Accommodating basic styles. Third order learning styles refer to balanced learning profiles where people learn in a holistic manner utilising the abilities associated with all four learning modes. There is very little understanding of these second and third order styles according to Kolb et al (2000) who say that more research about balanced learning profiles is urgently needed. The present study partly considered balanced learning styles through hypothesis 4, the results of which showed that subjects who scored high on all four learning modes possessed higher LAMTK. Clearly there is scope for more detailed research in this area, particularly research that explores the links between
second/third order learning styles and managerial tacit knowledge.
Future research is also needed to identify other variables that mediate the acquisition of tacit knowledge. Understanding the role of informal learning, especially the unplanned and unintentional learning that occurs during a manager’s development (Mahmud, 2006) is still in its infancy and would also benefit from more systematic empirical research to build on current theory. Empirical studies of the interaction between implicit and explicit knowledge and the mechanisms by which they are intertwined would also lead to further advancements in our ability to develop managers to their full capacity.
The present study has made a unique contribution to our understanding of the acquisition of managerial tacit knowledge. Not only has it demonstrated that learning styles may be a significant factor accounting for differences in levels of managerial tacit knowledge but the study has also shown that the degree to which job content and work context are congruent is
also an important factor. The study also demonstrated that managerial tacit knowledge is positively related to time spent working in a management context but is unrelated to the length of general work experience. The field of research exploring tacit knowledge in expert/novice groups in a variety of professions have been largely confined to western cultures. Another significant contribution of the present study is that the previously reported phenomenon that expert-novice groups within the same professional context differ in their levels of accumulated tacit knowledge has been extended to include the Malaysian Public Sector. Further studies of this type in a variety of other local and national contexts would be helpful in determining whether the present findings and implications can be accepted with confidence and generalised to other groups of managers.
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