Eliciting Tacit Knowledge from Spoken Discourse

Information Systems research has proposed a range of knowledge elicitation and requirements analysis techniques, few of which apply specific strategies for eliciting implicit knowledge from participants. This paper demonstrates a methodology for eliciting tacit knowledge from the spoken discourse of organisational participants through directed interviews. It argues that Polanyi’s (1966:4) widely cited notion that “we know more than we can tell” represents an impoverished model of language that does not acknowledge the implicit component of discourse. An argument is made to characterise tacit knowledge as implicit meaning-making. Our conception of tacit knowledge as implicit meaning-making is aligned with Polanyi’s model in the sense that it acknowledges that tacit knowing is a subsidiary process, however we argue that such an implicit process is also present in making meaning with language. We may articulate what we know implicitly through patterns and features of language to which we do not directly attend. Hence analysis of language appears a means for understanding and eliciting tacit knowledge. The present research provides a case-study demonstrating a practical application of such analysis. Our response is to extend Polanyi: “we tell more than we realise we know”.