Tacit Knowledge and In-service Training of Civil Servants

Abstract

The main purpose of the paper is to evaluate possibilities provided by organizational knowledge creation theory (Nonaka, 1994) for seeking after knowledge of civil servants. The fundamental task of organization (both, public or private, profit or non-profit) is how efficiently it can deal with information and decisions in an uncertain environment. Information processing is viewed as a problem-solving activity. But innovation, the key form of organizational knowledge creation, cannot be explained in terms of information processing or problem solving but with the process where organization is developing new knowledge to solve problems (Nonaka, 1994: 15). Due to the recent decision of Slovene government to abort the state exam for civil servants we elaborate the question of necessity of the pre-service and in-service training of civil servants and in what manner that training should be performed. Elaborating some experience in the neighborhood countries we try to find some conclusions of the topic. On the other hand we explore the possibilities given by organizational knowledge creation theory in in-service training of civil servants and its implications on choosing the topics of the training.