Repercussion of Michael Polanyi's Tacit Knowledge Theory: Km Brasil 2002-2018 proceedings

Discussions about the epistemology of knowledge are very old and cover areas from Health Sciences to Applied Social Sciences. In it we have an important figure: Michael Polanyi, proposing a harmonious perspective for the creation of knowledge, breaking the ideal of absolute objectivity inherited from the Scientific Revolution of the 18th century. The quali-quanti research uses data published in the documents published in the proceedings of the National Congress of Knowledge Management - KM BRASIL (2002-2018) that mention Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge in order to identify how his ideas are referred, the senses used and their development. In this direction, from KM BRASIL, we show authors, affiliations, date of publication, including possibilities to interpret Polanyi's ideas. We found that the theory is approached conceptually in the Brazilian context, corresponding to just over 5% of the total works published in the 13 years of the event. Although the theme of knowledge management occupies the center of the event's discussions, only this percentage cites the studies of Michael Polanyi. Indeed, the selected authors claim to be anchored in Polanyi's precepts to explain the epistemology of knowledge and its categorization. Subsequently, the authors insert the notion of management and the distinction between the tacit and the explicit from Nonaka and Takeuchi (1997). We apprehend that the introduction to the discussions on management, creation, transfer or storage of knowledge has always started from Polanyian epistemology, although not always in a reliable way.