TACIT KNOWLEDGE FOR LIVESTOCK INNOVATION: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT OR LEARNING MANAGEMENT
The business community has always known that that most of the knowledge and information it needs to remain competitive within constantly changing environments doesn’t comes from textbooks or research, but from hard-won lessons of experience. Sociologists and organisational change specialists call this tacit knowledge — as distinct from explicit or codified knowledge. Practitioners call it know-how and know-who. It’s the knowledge that helps you — but not your five-year-old daughter — ride a bike.
If tacit knowledge is so great, how can better use be made of it in development activities with an innovation dimension? Dr. Rasheed Sulaiman and Dr. Laxmi Thummuru have recently looked at this question in the livestock sector in India. They began by undertaking a detailed review of the tacit knowledge literature. Perhaps, not surprisingly, this revealed a set of ideas with many parallels to the innovation literature. As a case study they chose one of the most progressive producer-owned milk marketing companies in Andhra Pradesh, India — Visakha Dairy — and did detailed historical analysis of different episodes in Visakha’s evolution from its early origins as a cooperative. Two of those episodes are as follows:
Changing traditional practices means changing tacit knowledge: In order for the dairy to set up milk cooperatives and obtain milk directly from producers, it had to break the monopoly of one-man retailers who procure, transport and sell milk using bicycles. Farmers had traditionally sold their milk to these cycle vendors, who collected the milk from their doorsteps but often cheated them. Although introducing the milk cooperative model was in the farmers’ interest, the dairy faced resistance not only from cycle vendors — who would lose their businesses — but also from farmers wary of the emergence and effects of a new organisation in their village. Only by letting them experience the approach could the dairy change farmers’ knowledge about how best to sell milk. Farmers already had tacit knowledge on how to do this, but this had to be updated to introduce the cooperative model.
Using tacit knowledge to access early warning information: Central to Visakha’s success was its ability to maintain its independence from government interference. Historically dairy cooperatives have suffered political interference through skewed patterns of patronage mediated through state-level government-run milk marketing arrangements. Policy change in 1995 greatly reduced government interference by granting the cooperatives great autonomy. However, a new government in 2004 threatened to reverse this policy change once again by threatening the cooperative’s independence. However, because Visakha knew key players in the political environment — the analysts call this ‘know-who’ — and used these to gain early warning information of policy changes, it was able to circumvent them by changing into a producer company, thereby safeguarding its autonomy
The study suggests tacit knowledge often refers to the tricks of the trade that seems to explain the otherwise inexplicable practices and successes of seemingly similar organisations. It is difficult to identify and virtually impossible to codify and may not have any relevance outside an organisation or a particular location.
Rasheed and Laxmi argue that rather than worrying about finding better ways to share tacit knowledge — the mainstay of the knowledge management gurus — it is probably more important to ensure that tacit knowledge gets created in the first place. This suggests an emphasis on approaches and processes that help structure learning from experience at both the organisational and sector level. After all, knowledge — tacit or otherwise — has to come from learning. Perhaps the way forward is to invest in learning management instead of knowledge management.
For further details contact sulaiman@merit.unu.edu |
