What is Soft Knowledge?

Abstract

In order to further inform the notion of soft knowledge, in this chapter we will explore three areas of literature with different views of how work is supported by knowledge: Distributed Cognition, Common Ground, and Communities of Practice. The different views show, to a greater or lesser degree, that the capture-codify-store approach is probably the wrong metaphor. The exploration of these views also indicates that the simple soft-hard distinction is not as simple as it appears.