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While knowledge creation is typically driven by the transformation of the tacit to theexplicit, it usually entails a growth in both forms of knowledge.123.1 TheoryAll practice requires some assumptions or understanding of causal means-endrelationships. This understanding can be highly tacit, as in the habits, conventions,and traditions that form ‘‘team mental models’’ (Mohammed and Dumville, 2001),‘‘organizational cultures’’ (Schein, 1985), ‘‘dominant logics’’ (Prahalad and Bettis,1986), or ‘‘industry recipes’’ (Spender, 1989), and in those guiding the work of anaccomplished craftsman, or they can be explicit, as in the case of tested scientifichypotheses. Articulation depends on existing cognitive frames—theories, myths, andmental models—because coded messages derive meaning only in relationship topreviously acquired knowledge. Here, I shall refer to all such cognitive frames as‘‘theory’’—using the term broadly to include everything from inherited mental mapsto scientific theorems.The ‘‘theory’’ of a practice need not be very articulated in order to be useful.Medieval cathedral builders lacked a theory of structural mechanics but were able toconstruct extremely complex innovative structures by means of simple rules of thumbthat . . .. . . related sizes to spaces and heights by ratios, such as half thenumber of feet in a span expressed in inches plus one inch will give thedepth of a hardwood joist. These rules of thumb were stated as, andlearned as, ratios; for, as the span gets larger, the depth of the joist willtoo. This sort of geometry is extremely powerful. It enables thetransportation and transmission of structural experience, it makespossible the successful replication of a specific arrangement in differentplaces and different circumstances, it reduces a wide variety or problemsto a comparatively compact series of solutions, and it allows for a flexiblerather than rigidly rule-bound response to differing problems. (Turnbull,1993: 323)However, the application of these and similar rules of thumb in timeproved inadequate to the ambition of architects and their patrons. Like in12How well, or for how long articulated knowledge serves the interests of the community isanother issue. As it becomes obsolete, previously valuable knowledge may become a liability,acting as an obstacle to learning and change (Leonard-Barton, 1992). However, this liability ofknowledge seems to be largely independent of its degree of articulation or codification. Explicitrules may certainly reinforce resistance to change, but both internalized and implicitly acquiredknowledge residing in the unreflective unconscious and ‘‘packaged in conservative andconserving ways’’ (Hedlund 1994: 77) are probably equally if not more potent sources ofsuch resistance.
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