Page 55 - Volume_14

Jurnal PPM: Journal of Malaysian Librarians
Vol. 14, 2020

In general, knowledge is divided into two types and they are explicit knowledge and
tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is the knowledge that is already transformed into
something that is tangible such as documents, book, articles, reports, databases and
videos. Explicit knowledge is something tangible that one can see and touch. The world
of LIS have been dealing with this type of knowledge. The second type of knowledge
is tacit and it is the kind of knowledge that resides in human in the form of their ability
to think, experiences, skills, behaviours and expertise, and they are as appose to explicit
knowledge are intangible. Comparatively, it is harder to manage. It requires different
types of management methodology and tools. The mistake that most make is to manage
this type of knowledge as they manage explicit knowledge. Thus, the effort to codify
or transform tacit knowledge to explicit results in mixed successes to a complete failure.

Tacit knowledge is more important and difficult to manage even if it is transformed into
explicit knowledge. This is because tacit knowledge is really contextual. The best way
to manage (capture, store, share, retain) tacit knowledge is to manage it within the
people, the social network of the organisation through coaching, mentoring,
apprenticeship, deep conversation, case studies, teaching and learning.

To manage these two types of knowledge properly in an organisation is to first identify
what are the most critical knowledge, strategic to the organisation. Organisations need
to define what is strategic for the organisation. Thus, an organisation can focus on
managing its most strategic knowledge assets. In this instance, the right process will be
to do a knowledge audit to identify first what they are, where they are, in what form and
are they being managed properly. In the process, the knowledge culture and process in
the organisation will be identified to understand the opportunities and issues regarding
managing them in the organisation so that it can be managed better.

LIBRARY, INFORMATION SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
DISCIPLINE
Competency is defined as an individual having the knowledge, abilities, skills, and
13
behaviours to effectively perform in a particular working environment. Generally,
the two types of competencies are functional and behavioural competencies.

The UiTM’s Faculty of Information Management gives coverage of the discipline of LIS
from the specific focus on library management, information management, record
management and information system. This would cover among others the topics of
cataloguing; indexing and abstracting; information and content analysis; information

13 Bucur, I. (2013). Managerial core competencies as predictors of managerial performance, on Different
Levels of Management. Procedia – Social and Behavioural Science, 78: 365–369.

51