Crafting conversations with dialogic questioning to enable tacit knowledge enlivening in knowledge creation work

Abstract

The purpose of the current conceptual article is to discuss how conversations that support the creation of knowledge (knowing) from others' tacit knowledge need to be carefully, continuously, and responsively crafted to enable the enlivening and communication of such dimension of knowledge. Excessively open, answer-oriented, short-term conversations, and undisciplined questioning chaotically generate outcomes, reducing their pertinence, insightfulness, and contributiveness to knowledge creation. It is argued that knowing-conversations need to be crafted because enlivening and communicating tacit knowledge strongly require time, depth, reflection, and reflexive communication. The author intersected the foundational theory of Polanyi's tacit knowing and concepts of the communications field to approach the crafting of knowing-conversations with a disciplined 'dialogic questioning': a questioning mind, competence, and questioning practices. The article enriches the understanding of knowledge creation from others' tacit knowledge by deepening the comprehension of and addressing the peculiar demands of enlivening and communication tacit knowledge.