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The Bread-Making Machine: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action

Rodrigo Ribeiro and Harry Collins
Organization Studies 2007 28: 1417
DOI: 10.1177/0170840607082228

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article title

Peripheral Vision

The Bread-Making Machine: Tacit

Knowledge and Two Types of Action
Rodrigo Ribeiro and Harry Collins

Abstract

Rodrigo Ribeiro We analyse Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) claim that a master baker’s tacit knowledge
Cardiff University, was made explicit and incorporated into a home bread-making machine and its manual
UK; Federal — the ‘knowledge capture’ thesis. In order to test the claim, bread was made without and
University of Minas
with a breadmaker and we carried out an analysis of the bread-making actions before and
Gerais, Brazil
after mechanization. Based on the theory of action morphicity (Collins and Kusch 1998)
Harry Collins it is shown that the machine only mimics the mechanical counterpart of just a few of cer-
Cardiff University, tain special kinds of human bread-making actions. The remaining success of the machine
UK and its manual is due to what other human actors bring to the mechanical bread-making
scene; this way the breadmaker can be an adequate social prosthesis. Action mimicking,
action substitution, and the contributions of these other human actors, who are not
needed in the case of the master baker, explain why the machine and its manual do work.
It is not a matter of the explication or incorporation of tacit knowledge, but of fitting a
social prosthesis into a rearranged world.

Keywords: Tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, knowledge conversion, knowledge

management, technology transfer

‘With the breadmaker, even the most inexperienced baker can achieve the satisfying
experience of baking a loaf of bread. All the mystery and hard work is gone. Inside this
talented machine with an electronic brain, the dough is mixed, kneaded, proofed and
baked without you being present.’ (Morphy Richards 2004: 13)

The above extract, taken from the manual of a bread-making machine — the
Morphy Richards Compact Breadmaker built in Britain — reminds us Nonaka
and Takeuchi’s (1995) description of the first Japanese home bread-making
machine. Both contain claims about the machine’s intelligence and skills vis-à-
Organization vis the lack of experience required from users: ‘[the machine] transforms raw
Studies ingredients into freshly baked bread, doing everything from kneading and fer-
28(09): 1417–1433
ISSN 0170–8406 menting the dough to actually baking bread … the machine is remarkable in that
Copyright © 2007 it embodies the skills of a master baker in a device that can be operated easily
SAGE Publications by people with no knowledge of bread making’ (1995: 95).
(Los Angeles,
London, New Delhi The bread-making machine, taken as an example of ‘knowledge capture’, has
and Singapore) gained an appeal that goes beyond the kitchen. Its development is the main

www.egosnet.org/os DOI: 10.1177/0170840607082228

1418 Organization Studies 28(09)

empirical case used by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) to support their ‘theory of
organizational knowledge creation’. The latter is based on four possible interac-
tions between tacit and explicit types of knowledge. Among the alternatives of
‘knowledge conversion’, Nonaka and Takeuchi stress the ‘mobilization and
conversion of tacit knowledge’ into explicit knowledge as ‘the key to knowledge
creation’ (1995: 56, 66). At this point, the Japanese breadmaker becomes central.
For Nonaka and Takeuchi allege that a master baker’s tacit knowledge was ‘con-
verted’ into explicit knowledge and ‘embodied’ into the machine. Under this
theory, tacit knowledge is reduced to ‘hidden’ (1995: 71) or ‘not-yet-articulated
knowledge’ waiting to be uncovered and explicated (Tsoukas 2005: 154). Here
we will not discuss the overall theory of Nonaka and Takeuchi but the main
empirical case on which it was based. If their analysis of the case is wrong then,
presumably, their theory is wrong, but we leave these implications to theorists of
organization and management studies.
Nonaka and Takeuchi’s description of the breadmaker has been endlessly dis-
cussed and, more recently, criticized (Essers and Schreinemakers 1997;
Tsoukas 2005; Gourlay 2007; D’Eredita and Barreto 2006). One striking char-
acteristic of the entire literature is that, starting with Nonaka and Takeuchi
themselves, no author has tried to make any bread before putting words about
bread-making into papers about bread-making. Here we make bread as we
analyse. Consequently it is easy to see why the breadmaker does work as well
as it does even as we uncover the problems with the earlier descriptions of the
way it works.
We demonstrate that there is no ‘conversion’ from tacit to explicit knowledge
in bread-making machines. Tacit knowledge is still necessary for the bread to be
produced, but it is supplied by members of the wider human group in which the
machinery is embedded. Any ‘intelligent’ or automatic machine is a ‘social pros-
thesis’ (Collins 1990). The way a physical prosthesis such as an artificial heart
works can only be understood by watching the way it interacts with the rest of
the body. Likewise, the way a social prosthesis works cannot be understood by
examining it in isolation but only by looking at the way it fits into the web of
activities in which every other human activity is embedded. In making bread, the
role of the whole network on the one hand, and the specific elements that are
taken over by the bread-making machine on the other, are more readily discov-
ered. As we will see, as far as the direct replacement of human activity is con-
cerned, what the machine does is to mimic the mechanical counterpart of just a
few of certain special kinds of human bread-making actions. To use the analysis
and language of Collins and Kusch (1998), the whole ‘automatic’ bread-making
‘action tree’ involves substituting certain of the ‘polimorphic actions’ of normal
human bread-making and mimicking certain of the ‘mimeomorphic actions’ that
are already found in human bread-making (both types of action are defined in the
next section). At the end, the master baker’s tacit knowledge has been neither
explicated nor incorporated into the machine. Part of it was substituted by the
tacit knowledge of the other actors brought to the automated bread-making
scene, such as the users at home, the workers in the factory and repair special-
ists, while the other part has disappeared entirely at the cost of a standardized set
of products and procedures. In what follows, Collins and Kusch’s 1998 theory of
Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1419

action morphicity is first described. This is followed with the description of

bread-making, first without, and then with a machine. The breadmaker itself, and
the instruction manual that accompanies it, are then discussed.

The Theory of Action Morphicity

Collins and Kusch (1998) distinguish between the intentional and behavioural
parts of human actions. Action is defined by them as ‘the behaviour plus the
intention’ (1998: 32), behaviour being ‘the physical movements humans use to
execute the actions they intend’ (1998: 8). Collins and Kusch then divide human
actions into two types: ‘polimorphic’ and ‘mimeomorphic’.
A polimorphic action is an action that is generally executed with many dif-
ferent behaviours, depending on the social circumstances. For example, the
action of ‘greeting’, if always carried out with exactly the same movements or
tone of voice, would cease to be a greeting and become something more like a
‘salute’ or even an insult. But there are no available instructions for how to vary
the behaviour associated with the action in order to carry it out successfully.
Executing a polimorphic action successfully, and most of what we do consists
of polimorphic actions, depends on the tacit knowledge needed to live in soci-
ety. So long as machines do not understand social life it will be impossible to
mechanize polimorphic actions.
A mimeomorphic action, on the other hand, is an action that is generally car-
ried out with the same behaviour on every occasion or, to be more exact, with
behaviours which differ only randomly or in such a way as to be a matter of
indifference. For example, the different behaviours often used in punching in a
particular number on a telephone keyboard are a matter of indifference; one can
say that the number is always punched in by executing ‘the same’ behaviour.
Here the notion of ‘the same’ implies an area of tolerance (Collins and Kusch
1998: 47) around the degree of variation (and implies tolerance to exact simi-
larity if it could be managed — in contrast to the example of greeting).
Machines which mimic mimeomorphic actions can be constructed. The
proper word is ‘mimic’, rather than ‘reproduce’, since to reproduce an action
requires that the intention is also present and machines do not have intentions.
Where mimeomorphic actions are concerned, human areas of tolerance are then
translated by designers into the limits within which machines are to behave.
Machines do not need to understand the surrounding culture to mimic mimeo-
morphic actions. Another way to put this is that there is no discernible differ-
ence to an outside observer between mimicry of the behaviour associated with
a mimeomorphic action on the one hand, and repetition of the action, complete
with intention on the other, whereas this is not the case with polimorphic
actions.
Polimorphic and mimeomorphic actions can be combined in different ways
to form ‘action trees’ (Collins and Kusch 1998: 71–77). Action trees have high-
level actions that are executed by a series of lower-level and more specified
actions. Bread-making can be described as an action tree, with the actions of
kneading and baking within it. Bread-making is itself part of the action tree of
1420 Organization Studies 28(09)

‘cooking’. Nearly all skills consist of polimorphic action trees with bits and
pieces of mimeomorphic actions embedded within them.

Skills ‘Embodied’: The Home Bread-Making Machine

Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995: 95) account is about the development of the first
‘fully automated bread-making machine for home use’ developed by Matsushita.
It was introduced in the Japanese market in 1987 and was a sales success.
According to the standard account, the design team faced three problems in
developing the machine. The first was ‘how to mechanize the dough-kneading
process, which is essentially tacit knowledge possessed by master bakers’
(Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995: 63). The other two concerned temperature and
ingredient variability: ‘The ideal [ambient temperature] … was 27 to 28 degrees
centigrade, yet the variation in … Japan ranged between 5 and 35 degrees centi-
grade … different brands and kinds of flour and yeast further complicated the
control system’ (1995: 102–103).
It is said that in order to solve the dough-kneading problem, Ikuko Tanaka
was sent to learn how to make bread with a famous master baker. After a period,
‘[Tanaka] noticed that the baker was not only stretching but also “twisting” the
dough, which turned to be the secret of making tasty bread’ (1995: 64). At this
point, Nonaka and Takeuchi’s argument is that tacit knowledge can be expli-
cated by ‘taking the shapes of metaphors, analogies, concepts, hypotheses or
models’ (1995: 64) and then incorporating them into machines by their design-
ers. Kneading dough is presented as the key example:
‘[Tanaka] was able to transfer her knowledge to the engineers by using the phrase “twist-
ing stretch” to provide a rough image of kneading … Her request for a “twisting stretch”
movement was interpreted by the engineers ... After a year of trial and error … The team
came up with product specifications that successfully reproduced the head baker’s
stretching technique … The team then materialized this concept, putting it together into
a manual, and embodied it in the product.’ (1995: 104–105; emphasis added)

The temperature problem was solved by

‘adding the yeast at a later stage in the process … It was the way people had made bread
in the past … This method … was the result of the socialization and externalization of
the team members’ tacit knowledge.’ (1995: 107–8)

In this quotation, Nonaka and Takeuchi seem to use the term tacit knowledge to
refer to knowledge which is easily verbalized, but nobody has thought to men-
tion. Finally, the solution for different brands can be identified in a marketing
feature of the machine: ‘For even further convenience, a pre-measured bread-
mix package can be used to save the trouble of measuring out the required
ingredients’ (1995: 95).
We now examine this account in the light of the experience of bread-making
both without and with machines. It is certainly the case that, for novices, bread-
making is more reliable and more efficient with a machine. But since we are
going to argue that the skills of the master baker are not incorporated in bread-
making machines we must ask how it is that this success is achieved.
Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1421

Experiences of Bread-Making

I made bread using a Morphy Richards Compact Breadmaker borrowed from a

friend.1 It is like the Japanese breadmaker, at least as it is described by Nonaka
and Takeuchi, in that it mixes, kneads and bakes the bread. It differs from the
Japanese machine in that the yeast is mixed at the beginning of the operation.
Crucial in the case of both breadmakers are their printed manuals and their role
must also be taken into account. I also made bread by hand, making use of a do-
it-yourself booklet. I had never made bread before and my experience of cook-
ing is almost none.

Making Bread by Hand

To make bread by hand I started by reading a self-help booklet Bake Your Own
Bread (Deutch 1976), which presents bread-making as an ‘art’. For a novice,
such as myself, problems presented themselves from the beginning. Thus I
learned that
‘controversy still rages over fresh yeast versus dried yeast. … Because the plants in fresh
yeast are active and alive it is highly perishable and can be kept only for four to five days
in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. Fresh yeast should feel cool and like putty to
touch. It should be grey in colour and practically odourless … Do not use yeast that is
dry or sour-smelling or has dark streaks.’ (1976: 1–2)

Filled with fear about the recalcitrant nature of yeast I was uncertain of my
judgement about what cool putty should feel like. Timings were given in ranges
and the use of adjectives abounded: ‘After the end of 15 to 20 minutes the yeast
will be puffed up and frothy’, ‘If the dough is too soft and wet, more flour may
be worked in’, or ‘Continue kneading for about 10 minutes until the dough feels
smooth and elastic’ (1976: 2, emphasis added). Once more, these terms seemed
to call for more experience, learned in shared kitchen spaces, than I had. I did
not know the acceptable zone of tolerance around any of these descriptions,
such as how wet something should be that was not to be counted as ‘too wet’ or
too dry.
On the other hand I felt I could adopt a tip from the booklet that could not be
used in a breadmaker: ‘A shiny, glazed crust, characteristic of French and
Vienna bread or rolls, can be obtained by placing a flat pan of boiling water in
the bottom of the oven just before the bread is put in and leaving the tin in the
oven throughout the baking’ (1976: 2). The bread-making machine does not
have an oven in which a pan of water can be placed.
To make bread by hand was physically hard. I had not only to mix the ingre-
dients, but to knead, wait for the rising, knead again, wait for a second rising,
pre-heat the oven, shape the dough, and bake. I was either working on the
bread-making or monitoring it for nearly every moment of the 4 hours and 23
minutes it took for the bread to be ready.
When there were still 35 to 45 minutes to go, I smelled burning. The top of
the loaf had become darker. I took the loaf from the oven and, following the
instructions, rapped its bottom with my knuckles. It did not sound like a ‘drum’
(this part of the instruction I could understand) and it had to go into the oven
1422 Organization Studies 28(09)

again, upside down. After 10 minutes, the bottom ‘sounded’ right and the job
was finished.
The loaf was still dark on the top, but the crust was a little bit softer, proba-
bly due to the tip on the boiling water. Nevertheless, to my disappointment, the
bread was undercooked. Ten minutes more in the oven and it was ready. Despite
the problems it was edible.

Making Bread with a Bread-Making Machine

In the case of the machine, the first thing I did was to read the manual (Morphy
Richards 2004) from cover to cover. I found that, while handmade bread can
come in any size and shape, the machine offers the possibility of baking only two
sizes in only the one, cuboid, shape. Part of the skill of a master baker will be in
choosing sizes and shapes, even inventing new ones. The machine also offers
three options of ‘crust colour’; it can be set up to produce a ‘light’, ‘medium’ or
‘dark’ crust. The machine, one might say, presses the user into shape, size and
crust colour (Woolgar 1991). For each of the two sizes of loaf 12 recipes are
given. Each recipe corresponds to a ‘program’ that has to be selected by the user.
The programs define the timing of the different machine operations: Knead 1,
Rise 1, Knead 2, Rise 2, Rise 3 and Bake (2004: 21). Choosing a recipe among
the ones listed in the manual is a polimorphic action. The user must know the
recipes and which of them is the most appropriate for the social circumstances
in which the bread is to be eaten. The actual selection of the program once it has
been chosen is, however, a mimeomorphic action. Selecting the chosen program
is like dialling a telephone number — a matter of pressing buttons, the exact way
it is done being irrelevant within a wide envelope of tolerance.
The instruction manual places a lot of stress on ‘measuring’ and ‘ingredi-
ents’. A section on ‘Measuring ingredients’ includes explanations of how to
measure accurately and the consequences of doing it wrong: ‘scooping or tap-
ping a measuring cup will pack the ingredients and you will end up with more
than required. This extra amount could affect the balance of the recipe’ (2004:
12). ‘Measuring the ingredients accurately’ is the solution for 15 out of 30 pos-
sible problems listed in the ‘Troubleshooting’ section (2004: 24–25). In addi-
tion its importance is mentioned, on average, every three pages. In contrast to
the 12 pre-set programs, this part of the manual initially seems to be very much
like the do-it-yourself booklet in tone: the user would have to bring special
skills to the task and make skilled judgements about the size of the areas of tol-
erance around what counts as correct measurement in that local area of society
(i.e. bread-making). Nevertheless, a closer look at the manual shows that the
nature of measuring was transformed. Standardized measuring tablespoons and
teaspoons as well as a cup are provided with the breadmaker. A drawing show-
ing how to ‘level’ — not to ‘heap’ — is presented in the manual and the use of
‘normal kitchen spoons’ is not recommended, as ‘these are inaccurate’ (2004:
12, 20). The polimorphic action of measuring just by looking at quantities and
adding a pinch of this or a handful of that, something that a master baker can
surely do, has been substituted by mimeomorphic actions of filling and level-
ling measuring cups and spoons. This is something that could be easily
 Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1423

automated, as the automation of raw material measurement in more complex

industrial plants demonstrates.
The section devoted to ‘Know your ingredients’ (2004: 11) explains the differ-
ent kinds of ingredients, how they affect the bread, and what users should use or
not. Examples are: ‘Self-raising Flour contains unnecessary leavening ingredients
that will interfere with bread … It is not recommended for use’ or ‘It is recom-
mended that fast action yeast be used’ (2004: 11–12). Finally, in the ‘Recipes’
section users are ‘informed’ that ‘These recipes have been developed using
Allison flours and Easybake Allison yeast’ (2004: 14). Here it seems that the range
of ingredients is being narrowed down to a restricted number of pre-set options.
I took a recipe for French bread from the machine manual for the experiment.
I went to the market, searched for the ingredients and brands listed in the man-
ual, and checked the valid date. It then took me 28 minutes to prepare the ingre-
dients, put them into the machine, and enter the options of program and loaf
size. I pressed the ‘start button’ and 3.5 hours later the bread was ready. The
owner of the bread-making machine said that the bread had the same taste as
when she makes it and this leads me to assume that I had used it successfully.

Analysis of the Fieldwork

For a novice, bread-making by machine was more reliable, more efficient, less
stressful and physically easier: the machine ‘worked’. It did not, however,
embody the skills of a master baker or even the skills I learned (or failed to
learn), from the do-it-yourself booklet. (Although there were differences in the
outcomes — the hand-made bread being considered better — I treated the final
products as ‘the same’ for the purpose of analysis.) ‘Bread-making’ with the
machine was simplified and standardized. The pre-set possibilities of loaf size,
recipes, brands and types of ingredients offered countable and unambiguous —
digitized — options for me to choose. As foreseen in the manual, my skills of
reading and measuring were enough:
‘This machine requires only that you carefully follow the recipe instructions. In basic
cooking, normally “a pinch of this and a dash of that” is fine, but not for breadmakers.
Using an automatic breadmaker requires [that] you accurately measure each ingredient
for best results.’ (Morphy Richards 2004: 13)

We can summarize what was learned from the fieldwork in tables. Table 1
shows the way the actions of the master baker baking a specific and fixed size,

Table 1. Bread-making machine

Cooking a Fixed
Size, Shape and Master baker Mimicry by machine Substitution by user
Type of Bread
in Two Ways Picking up the ingredients Mimeomorphic Mimeomorphic
Measuring Polimorphic Mimeomorphic
Setting program — Mimeomorphic
Setting dough size — Mimeomorphic
Mixing and kneading Mimeomorphic Mimeomorphic
Shaping Mimeomorphic Mimeomorphic
Baking Mimeomorphic Mimeomorphic
1424 Organization Studies 28(09)

shape and type of bread were incorporated or transformed by the breadmaker

and the user of the machine.
Once the size, shape, and type or recipe of bread has been decided, the
machine and user do not have a difficult task of automation. Only one action —
that of measuring — has to be transformed from polimorphic to mimeomorphic
and this is not done by the machine but by the supply of measuring cups and
spoons and a very careful and oft-repeated set of instructions and warnings.
(Note that, so long as we do not concern ourselves with the tacit knowledge the
reader needs to understand the manual, we could say that the manual is written
as though to address a machine. In principle, novice users do not have to under-
stand the intentions behind the mimeomorphic actions they need only to mimic.
For instance in picking up the ingredients that follow from the ‘French recipe’
Ribeiro was mimicking an action without understanding the intention behind it.
This is why, in principle, all the mimeomorphic actions performed by users in
the upper part of Table 1 could be mechanized.) Everything else that is done by
the master baker is a mimeomorphic action and these can be mimicked by the
machine without running into any of the normal problems of trying to mecha-
nize socially embedded human action.
Not all mimeomorphic actions are explicable to humans. Kneading, though it
is a mechanizable mimeomorphic behaviour, is something that is only mastered
as a piece of tacit knowledge by humans (like balancing on a bicycle). These
heavily tacit-knowledge laden mimeomorphic actions are learned by humans in
social groups just as polimorphic actions are learned and that is why the litera-
ture on tacit knowledge often does not put the dividing line between what can
be automated and what cannot be automated in the right place. That humans can
learn a certain kind of behaviour only the way they learn polimorphic actions
does not mean that the behaviour is polimorphic — after all, it is easy to auto-
mate balancing a bike. What cannot be so easily automated is bike-riding in
traffic, which requires social understanding (for these distinctions see Collins
and Kusch 1998). The way the breadmaker used by Ribeiro mixes and kneads
differs from the way it is done by the Japanese bread-making machine and
probably differs from the way humans do it, but the mimeomorphicity is
demonstrated by the tolerance to variations in the exact behavioural instantia-
tion of the kneading act. (One way to make a bike balance is by using gyro-
scopes!)
The fact that learning mimeomorphic actions calls for humans to learn how to
judge if the behaviour is within the areas of tolerance is also a confounding fac-
tor. For instance, Gourlay (2007) does not distinguish between ‘somatic-limit
tacit knowledge’ and ‘collective tacit knowledge’ (Collins 2007)2 when he argues
that the socialization between the master baker and Tanaka can be seen just as
individual learning-by-doing, and not as a case of tacit knowledge transfer.
Tanaka had to go through some individual trial-and-error in order to knead
(which is a mimeomorphic action based on somatic-limit tacit knowledge). But
in order to knead properly, she needed someone to tell or show her what an error
was or not, she needed the master baker to teach her how to make ‘correct judg-
ments’ (Wittgenstein 1976 [1953]: 227e) about whether the outcome of the
kneading was or was not within the right area of tolerance. This involves the
Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1425

transfer of collective tacit knowledge. Note, however, that the polimorphicity of

learning how to make judgements about mimeomorphic actions does not make
the mimeomorphic actions polimorphic. The polimorphic action is simply
higher up the action tree. Of course, one could ‘zoom out’, as it were, and con-
sider that the action of kneading includes the judgement aspect, in which case
that larger action does have to be considered polimorphic. The analysis of what
can be mechanized and exactly how to mechanize it will be less fine grained if
carried out from the zoomed-out perspective.
Going back to Table 1, the user is also made responsible for a couple of
mimeomorphic actions that are unique to the use of the machine — namely
pressing the program-setting buttons. The table makes it easy to see what is
done by the user and what is done by the machine, and how it is that the
machine and the user can do their jobs without too many problems. This, how-
ever, is only a small part of the story of mechanizing bread-making.
Pulling back from the narrow focus on a fixed size, shape and style or recipe
of loaf reveals more of the action tree of bread-making and enables us to see
that in the upper regions there are considerable differences between the master
baker’s action tree and that of the breadmaker.
To make bread by hand and by machine consist of different ‘action trees’.
Although the higher intention is the same — to make bread — this is accom-
plished by distinct sets of actions and action mimicking under it. Gourlay
(2007) too draws on the distinction between polimorphic and mimeomorphic
actions in order to highlight these two ways of making bread: ‘In competitive
economies, the set of tasks of any practice are often reorganized by transform-
ing polimorphic tasks into more mimeomorphic ones, otherwise known as
deskilling’ (Gourlay 2007).
‘Deskilling’ is an unfortunate choice of term because many mimeomorphic
actions carried out by humans require a great deal of skill. For example, the golf
swing is mimeomorphic and can (at least in principle) be better accomplished by
machine (the psychology of match play is polimorphic). Synchronized swimming,
marching, ski-jumping, high-board diving and other such sports are mimeomor-
phic — humans measure their performance against machine-like perfection. Thus
a better term for what Gourlay wants to describe would be ‘de-socializing’. Most
actions are a complex weave of mimeomorphic and polimorphic which can be
untangled only with the most enormous care. Printing books, for example, seems
purely mimeomorphic but consider the way that meaning is affected by the chosen
font and the difference between a justified and a ragged right-hand margin. Laying
out a page is a context-sensitive and therefore polimorphic action.
That aside, Gourlay is right, at least, partially right. What we will add to
Gourlay’s analysis is to show that mechanization of bread-making also involves
the substitution of polimorphic actions by other polimorphic actions executed
by actors both near and far from the kitchen. For example, some of the polimor-
phic actions of the master baker are substituted by the polimorphic actions of
the machine user, the machine designer and the machine repair specialist. We
also add a great deal more about the way these processes work.
Table 2 displays actions prior to the choice of a specific size, shape and style
of loaf, once more as executed by a master baker in one column and the
1426 Organization Studies 28(09)

Table 2.
Actions Prior to Bread-making machine
the Choice of a
Fixed Size, Master baker Mimicry by machine Substitution by humans
Shape and Style
Setting up the production scene Polimorphic Polimorphic
of Bread
Choosing recipe, size and Polimorphic Polimorphic
crust colour
Dealing with the variability of Polimorphic Polimorphic
ingredients and brands
Choosing level of tolerance Polimorphic Polimorphic
of final product

Below this line a single style of bread has been chosen. The first table fits below here in the action tree.

machine and human actors in other columns. A difference in the rightmost col-
umn heading of this table and Table 1 should be noted. In Table 2 ‘users’
become ‘humans’ because here, some of the humans responsible for the actions
are not the users of the machine.
In row 1 we see the action of setting up the production scene. On one hand,
these are not so different for master baker and machine user. Both must gather
ingredients and utensils — albeit the choices are different — and be responsible
for hygiene. Both must make sure that the ingredients are not contaminated or
spoiled. These actions call for social judgements, such as what counts as a satis-
factory level of cleanliness, and hence both are polimorphic actions. On the other
hand, users must be members of a culture where domestic appliances and their
manuals are commonplace. This enables them to understand the machine
‘microworld’ and what should be taken into account when preparing the scene for
it to mimic properly and safely — all of which call for social judgements as well.
The concept of ‘microworld’ was first used by Minsky and Papert: ‘Each model
— or ‘micro-world’ … talks about a fairyland in which things are so simplified that
almost every statement about them would be literally false if asserted about the real
world’ (1970: 39, quoted by Dreyfus, 1979 [1972]: 9). Dreyfus responds that:
‘a set of interrelated facts may constitute a universe, a domain, a group, etc., but it does
not constitute a world, for a world is an organized body of objects, purposes, skills, and
practices in terms of which human activity have meaning or make sense’. (Dreyfus 1979
[1972]: 13)

Bread-making by hand is a ‘world’; that part of bread-making done by machine

is a ‘microworld’.
Choice of recipe, size, and crust colour are also polimorphic actions for both
master baker and machine user. One rule-of-thumb for determining the ‘mor-
phicity’ of an action is what we might call the ‘pigeon test’. Can one imagine a
pigeon (or monkey, in the case of kneading) being trained by behavioural con-
ditioning techniques to carry out the action? Choosing the right kind of bread
for the circumstances involves thinking about the season and whether or not the
bread is to celebrate some social event or just to be eaten in the normal way of
things, what kind of food it might go with, the nationality of the consumers, the
time available in which to cook it and the ingredients to hand. Even if a device
were constructed such that the choice was made by pecking at one of a number
of buttons, a pigeon could not be trained to make the choice. On the other hand,
Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1427

once the choice has been made, a pigeon could be trained to peck at the appro-
priate program keys so as to execute the choice.
The choice, it should be noted, is made, on the one hand, by the master baker
working alone and, on the other hand, by the user of the machine along with the
designers of the machine. The designers give the machine a much more
restricted range of options than that available to the master baker. The owner of
the particular breadmaker used in this test explained that the option of ‘light
crust’ actually produces too dark bread for her taste, but that she could do noth-
ing about it.
Dealing with the variability of ingredients and brands is a polimorphic action
as it involves judgements regarding differences in taste, flavour or texture and
their impact on the final product. In making bread by machine, this action is
assumed by those who write the manual with its standard recipes, ingredients
and brands. They try to sort this problem out beforehand as it is clear that novice
users, such as myself, cannot make such evaluations. Another possibility is the
use of the ‘pre-measured packages’ mentioned by Nonaka and Takeuchi. In this
case, the designers and workers who produce the packages are the ones who
substitute the master baker’s skills in regard to this task.
The fourth row of the table is choice of level of tolerance. We may imagine
that a master baker making bread for the Queen of England would be far more
careful about quality than one making bread for sale off a cart. In the very flow
of the cooking the master baker will be executing a choice about how tolerant
to be and this is a polimorphic choice because it turns on social circumstances.
This choice is made for the user by the designer and makers of the machine.
Again it is a polimorphic action; this time the designers have to think about
what degree of variation (i.e. quality of bread) users of the breadmaker will
accept. This is another difference between the two bread-making action trees.
While the master baker can modify the levels of tolerance all the way through
making bread, machine users cannot. The areas of tolerance within which the
breadmaker works are made fixed at the time of its design, and so is the quality
of its products.
We could now construct a Table 3 if we wished. Table 3 would fit below
Table 1 rather than above it. It would show, for instance, the actions required
after the loaf had been completed. After the cycle was completed the user has
to decide whether the bread is within the range of acceptability. It could be that
the user would notice an unacceptable smell, colour, texture or taste — all
matters of social convention. This in turn might imply an open-ended investi-
gation of the breadmaker and/or the ingredients. Was the level of hygiene right,
was the yeast pure, was the fuse blown? If the problem could not be found and
fixed by the user then repair specialists would have to be brought in to do their
polimorphic action-laden tasks. There are still more polimorphic elements to
the bread-making action tree carried out by those more remote from the scene.
These include inventing new cooking techniques — such as the one repre-
sented by the pan of water in the oven — for developing better breadmakers.
It would be tedious to analyse all this in detail and actually draw up Table 3,
but the wider focus is worth mentioning because, once more, it stresses the fact
that the bread-making machine itself is embedded in a society that adjusts to
1428 Organization Studies 28(09)

make it fit, and the notion that the skills of a master baker are simply trans-
ferred to this small mechanism is misplaced.

The Continuum of Human Contribution to Mechanical Bread-

Making

The fieldwork described above represents just one user who embarked on bread-
making from a low level of expertise in the domain of cooking. A breadmaker
could be used more flexibly. A more experienced user could have used it just for
the hard physical work of kneading, the prepared dough then being shaped and
baked by hand. Perhaps experiments could have been done with novel ingredients,
not listed in the instruction manual but anticipated therein: ‘Flours, while visibly
similar, can be very different by virtue of how they were grown, milled, stored, etc.
You may find that you will have to experiment with different brands of flour to help
you make the perfect loaf’ (Morphy Richards 2004: 11); ‘When creating your own
yeast bread recipes or baking an old favourite, use the recipes in this cookbook as
a guide for converting portions from your recipe to your breadmaker’ (2004: 13).
It might also be possible to use the machine still more creatively, perhaps switch-
ing the power off to make intermediate modifications to the bread before restarting
the cycle. Actually, the manual demanded that some flexibility be drawn on:
‘Humidity can cause problems, therefore humidity and high altitudes require adjust-
ments. For high humidity, add an extra tablespoon of flour if consistency is not right. For
high altitudes, decrease yeast amount by approximately ¼ teaspoon, and decrease sugar
and/or water or milk slightly.’ (Morphy Richards 2004: 13)

All of this, of course, requires more of the master baker’s skills to be added to
the social network surrounding the social prosthesis, ‘repairing’ its deficiencies
to a greater and greater extent and making Nonaka and Takeuchi’s account still
more misleading.

The Instruction Manual

The whole of the above analysis could be repeated for the instruction manual,
which is just as mysterious a piece of ‘machinery’ as the breadmaker. One can
see that an instruction manual itself depends on a huge input of skills from the
user — the skills of language interpretation as well as some previous practice
— and from those who write and modify manuals in response to users’ failure
to understand.
Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) argument that analogies, metaphors, concepts
and the like can explicate and transfer tacit knowledge fails for the same reason.
They say ‘[Tanaka] translated the kneading skill into explicit knowledge. The
knowledge was externalized by creating the concept of “twisting stretch”’
(1995: 105) but, contrary to what is claimed, the concept of ‘twisting stretch’
was not enough for Tanaka to transfer her knowledge. The Japanese engineers
failed when they tried to understand what Tanaka was talking about. As put by
Nonaka and Takeuchi themselves,
Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1429

‘neither the head baker nor Tanaka was able to articulate knowledge in any systematic
fashion. Because their tacit knowledge never became explicit [although here Nonaka and
Takeuchi hold a position closer to the one in this paper, their whole theory is based in the
argument that tacit knowledge associated with kneading dough was made explicit] …
engineers were also brought to the hotel … For those who had never touched dough
before, understanding the kneading skill was so difficult that engineers had to share expe-
riences by spending hours at the baker to experience the touch of the dough.’ (1995: 104)

‘Twisting stretch’ only started to convey its practical meaning when it was
learned through social contact with the master baker. Ribeiro also faced this
problem when reading about ‘soft’, ‘wet’, ‘smooth’ or ‘elastic’ dough in the
booklet. Although the adjectives were written, they were not explicit. To
look them up in the dictionary would do no good. Again, the only way for
Ribeiro to understand what they mean in practice is if he starts socializing
with bakers.
The point is also exemplified by the difficulty of the owner of the machine
used in the fieldwork. She complained that the manual contained a mistake.
There was a recipe in it that called for the user to measure 5/8 of a cup of raisins
(Morphy Richards 2004: 14) with a measuring cup. The problem, she said, was
that the standard cup did not provide such a mark. To translate the manual
Ribeiro had to calculate 5/8 by counting 20 out of the 32 sub-divisions in
‘ounces’ that were provided. The cup had an opportunity of use for Ribeiro —
to measure 5/8 of a cup — that was not clear to the machine owner. (Though
this in itself provides another illustration since Ribeiro, not used to the English
measuring system, had no idea what the unit ‘oz’, which was inscribed on the
cup, meant!)
The examples above show that explicit pieces of knowledge can only be
understood by others, or serve as a way of transferring knowledge, if the indi-
viduals concerned already share some similar experiences or backgrounds.
Polanyi makes the point in discussing maxims:
‘Maxims are rules, the correct application of which is part of the art which they govern.
The true maxims of golfing or of poetry increase our insight into golfing or poetry and
may even give valuable guidance to golfers and poets; but these maxims would instantly
condemn themselves to absurdity if they tried to replace the golfer’s skill or the poet’s
art. Maxims cannot be understood, still less applied by anyone not already possessing a
good practical knowledge of the art.’ (Polanyi 2002 [1958]: 31)

(See also Wittgenstein (1976 [1953]), Quine (1966 [1959]), Collins (1974),
Tsoukas (2005), and Polanyi (1969) quoted by Gourlay (2007) for the gen-
eral argument that ‘explicit’ forms of knowledge presuppose shared tacit
understandings.) That is, analogies, metaphors, maxims, ‘stories’ (Orr 1990;
Stiles 1995), ‘MBA case-studies’ (Adler 1995), manuals, books and so on are
means of enculturating someone into a social group. But it is the whole
process of socialization that allows one to acquire the tacit rules regarding a
task or a community which, in turn, enable them to perform polimorphic
actions. It is all this tacit knowledge that is part of a culture where natural
language, cooking and domestic appliances are commonplace, which was
taken for granted in the earlier analyses of the bread-making machine and its
instruction manual.
1430 Organization Studies 28(09)

Final Remarks

To make bread without and with a breadmaker demonstrated that when humans
perform a task, mimeomorphic and polimorphic actions are mostly carried out
in concert. When mechanization takes place, what is done in an intertwined way
by humans is separated into distinct actions and the behavioural counterparts of
actions, which are distributed among humans and machines, some of them dis-
tant from the kitchen. To overlook and mix up these transfers and how machines
and humans interact can lead one to claim that machines can do more than
mimic mimeomorphic actions.
This problem is also present on a much grander scale in many other settings.
The most spectacular is the failure of the attempt to replace human skills by expert
system programs in computers, most notably the Japanese ‘Fifth Generation’ pro-
ject. Launched in 1981 by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry,
the fifth-generation computer initiative was a ‘bold attempt to leapfrog the
advancement of computing technology to produce a computer that processed
knowledge rather than numbers’ (Cross 1992: 16) and ‘solve problems with
human-style reasoning’ (Reid 1992: c1). The problem with expert systems is that,
without the contribution of the social knowledge of users, they simply fail when-
ever they are confronted with a problem marginally outside their data base
(Collins 1990). What is particularly surprising is that Nonaka and Takeuchi’s
(1995) description of the breadmaker, coming from Japan as it does, echoes the
assumptions of the Fifth Generation enthusiasts just after it was considered a fail-
ure (Cross 1992; Pollack 1992; Reid 1992).
The breadmaker case study, then, far from being an example of the incorpo-
ration of human skills into a machine, is an example of how a machine can be
made to work without incorporating human skills. The lessons of this small case
study can be transferred to automation and anything else which involves tacit
knowledge. For example, Ribeiro has recently found that the analysis of
mimeomorphic and polimorphic actions which fits the breadmaker can be used,
almost without modification, to explain the difficulties of transferring the tacit
knowledge of steel and mining technologies from Japan and Australia to Brazil.
The analysis also applies to attempts to automate specific tasks, whole factories
and even science. And, of course, it should be thus since the overall critique of
automation and artificial intelligence goes back at least as far as 1972 (Dreyfus
1979 [1972]; Winograd and Flores 1986; Suchman 1994 [1987]; Collins 1990;
Collins and Kusch 1998). For the specific case of science, see the argument
about Herbert Simon’s BACON program, which was claimed to be able to dis-
cover scientific laws (Collins 1989, 1991; Simon 1991) or, more recently but yet
not discussed, the ‘robot scientist’ (Roach 2004).
Machines and pieces of ‘explicit’ knowledge, such as instruction manuals and
books, are deceptive. Their meaning seems to be carried within them but actu-
ally it is provided by us. Their potential lies in the tacit knowledge and social
understanding brought to their use by both their producers and their users. This
is acquired through common enculturation and socialization within similar
groups or forms of life. The point is best understood by the realization that there
are two kinds of human action which relate in different ways to mechanization:
 Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1431

machines can mimic mimeomorphic actions without loss but they fail when
asked to reproduce polimorphic actions. A much better understanding of the
process and possibilities of mechanization results from first decomposing
human actions into their mimeomorphic and polimorphic components. With
such a decomposition in hand, far better automated machines can be built and
there will be far fewer disappointed users and false dawns in the realm of ‘intel-
ligent machines’.

Notes The authors acknowledge Sara Delamont for previous readings of this manuscript, and Eliana Keen
and Ana Tonani for their support for the bread-making experiences. The first author is also grateful
to CAPES Foundation, Brazil, which is funding his research studies at Cardiff University.
1 The making of bread was entirely the responsibility of the first author and, for easy of exposi-
tion, the next passages of the paper are written in the first person with ‘I’ always referring to
Ribeiro.
2 ‘Somatic-limit tacit knowledge’ is knowledge that is tacit only because it is so complex that
human beings can master it only through socialization — that is, guided instruction in a social
group. An example is learning to balance on a bicycle. Just because it is complex does not mean
that it cannot be mimicked by machines, however. In contrast, ‘collective tacit knowledge’ is
knowledge that is essentially a property of human collectivities and cannot be mimicked by fore-
seeable machines; an example is riding a bicycle in traffic. Some mimeomorphic actions involve
somatic-limit tacit knowledge and some involve knowledge that is not tacit and can be mastered
without socialization — for example, actions that can be accomplished by following written
instructions. In Collins and Kusch (1998: 89) these two types are referred to as ‘complex’ and
‘simple’ mimeomorphic actions. It is important to note that complex and simple mimeomorphic
can both be mechanized while polimorphic actions (all of which involve collective tacit knowl-
edge) cannot. The tacitness or non-tacitness of knowledge as experienced by humans does not
correspond to the non-mechanizable/mechanizable partition — a point that is often missed. To
avoid terminological confusion it is worth noting that the set of actions that involve collective tacit
knowledge is coextensive with the set of polimorphic actions. On the other hand the set of actions
that involve somatic-limit tacit knowledge is only a sub-set of the set of mimeomorphic actions.

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 Ribeiro and Collins: Tacit Knowledge and Two Types of Action 1433

Rodrigo Ribeiro Rodrigo Ribeiro is a doctoral student at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff
University, and a lecturer at the Department of Production Engineering of the Federal
University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. His main interests and research are on technical,
social, linguistic and cultural aspects of knowledge and technology transfer. His paper,
‘The Language Barrier as an Aid to Communication’, which deals with transfer of steel-
making technology between Japan and Brazil, will be published in Social Studies of
Science in 2007.
Address: Rua Engenheiro Senna Freire 612, Belo Horizonte, CEP: 30350–400, Minas
Gerais, Brazil.
Email: RibeiroR@dep.ufmg.br

Harry Collins Harry Collins is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology and director of the Centre
for the Study of Knowledge, Expertise and Science (KES) at Cardiff University. His thir-
teen books include three research monographs on the sociology of scientific knowledge,
for example Gravity’s Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves (2004, Chicago), and
two analysing artificial intelligence. The introductory The Golem: What You Should Know
About Science has been followed by volumes on technology and medicine. 2007 will see
the publication of Collins and Evans: Rethinking Expertise (Chicago).
Address: Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, Glamorgan Building, King
Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT, UK.
Email: CollinsH@cardiff.ac.uk