International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

240 INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 2003knowledge: A refined definition and an integrative approach’, research resultswill be integrated in a refined definition of implicit knowledge. Furthermore,an integrative approach to research is presented that might be fruitful inconsidering cognitive as well as work psychology aspects. Finally, directionsfor future research and implications for the management of implicit knowledgein organizations are discussed.IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE—THE PHENOMENON 1In the literature several instances and examples are cited that are more or lessopenly connected to implicit knowledge. To give an impression of thephenomenon we will briefly present some of these examples.The first example is cited by Kirsner and Speelman (1998): according to arumor a leading French cheese producer spent several million francs on thedevelopment of an expert system to determine the ripeness of camembert.The latest knowledge elicitation techniques were used to identify the type ofinformation employed by the experts. From the experts’ responses it wasconcluded that the critical procedure occurred when the experts squeezedthe cheese and that the crucial variable involved the tension of the cheesesurface or, possibly, the pressure required compressing the cheese. Subsequently,an automatic system for measuring the surface tension of the cheesewas developed—and failed completely. That is, the ripeness measurements ofthe system were systematically different from those of the experts. Subsequentresearch demonstrated that the actual information used by the expertswere olfactory cues, not the surface tension, and that the olfactory informationwas released when the experts pinched the cheese just enough to break it.This example demonstrates two of the most commonly mentioned featuresof implicit knowledge—the difficulty to verbalize this knowledge and itsrelation to action. The experts were able to access explicit knowledge abouttheir expertise, and to provide verbal reports based on that knowledge.However, the explicit knowledge they named provided false informationabout the process despite the fact that they were experts in the task itself.The information the experts actually used was not ‘open’ to review althoughthey used it successfully for years. In this case the consequences of theproblem to gain access to implicit knowledge were ‘only’ financial. Onedare hardly think of the hazards that could be produced by this problemwere it used, for example, in medical expert systems or the operation ofpower plants.A second class of examples reveals a property of implicit knowledge that isespecially important in the workplace—the use and integration of often1Although in some literature the term ‘tacit knowledge’ is used we will continuously use‘implicit knowledge’ throughout the chapter because implicit is a broader term that alsocomprises tacit.