Transferring Tacit Knowledge in Safety-Critical Systems Examples from maritime pilot training

Other conference contribution, 2023

In safety-critical systems the complexity and the required skills to manage these systems are challenging. The consequences of errors in such systems can be disastrous. Accurate knowledge management is therefore vital for a safety-critical organization to reach set goals. Managing explicit knowledge is relatively easy but managing tacit (implicit) knowledge is much more difficult to achieve. Expert knowledge in the form of tacit knowledge can be problematic to manage in terms of elicitation, documentation, and transfer, both on individual as well as on group level. An effective transfer process for tacit knowledge between experts and novices is therefore essential. Maritime pilotage is a safety-critical operation in which pilots use their expertise to guide vessels in specific waterways. Maritime pilot training is conducted in classrooms, simulators, and in various real-life environments, often in social settings. Tacit knowledge transfer is in general dependent on situated learning, such as community of practice, apprenticeship, or hands-on learning in the social settings. Thus, different didactical methods and instruments need to be applied to assure the best learning outcome. Learning a new skill is much about reproducing existing expert knowledge in the mind of the novice pilot. However, pilot students are already expert mariners and must not only attain new skills to act as an indirect crew member of a piloted vessel, but also to maintain their expertise to provide guidance to other vessel crews. Much of the trade specific skills are acquired during the hands-on learning segment of the training, where the student interacts with a supervisor during actual pilotage on a specific waterway. Briefings before, during, and after simulator sessions are other important nodes for transferring tacit knowledge. During briefings, individually between instructor and student, or in group settings, tacit knowledge can more easily be adopted due to interaction effects when focusing on solving the same task to reach set goals. The simulator itself can also provide means for the instructor to show, and for the students to try, different approaches to achieve effective pilotage. The simulator cannot, however, solely comprise an effective didactical instrument but needs to be operated according to a quality assured syllabus. To conclude, tacit knowledge transfer is largely dependent on the personal didactical technique or style of the individual instructor and is difficult to adequately document in didactical or pedagogical terms. Furthermore, only trying to document and store tacit knowledge is not sufficient in terms of knowledge management. Reproducing knowledge requires an effective transfer process to assure that expected learning outcomes are reached. In other words, tacit knowledge must not only be transferred, but also correctly comprehended, stored, and applied by the novice pilot in the new profession. Therefore, further studies are needed to deepen the understanding on how knowledge transfer and learning outcome are linked.