By ignoring tacit knowledge, we can tell less than we know about research impact.

Impact case studies, such as those produced for the UK’s research excellence framework, often present neat linear impact narratives that reflect the transmission of explicit knowledge from the world of research to the world of practice. Vincent W Mitchell, William S Harvey and Geoffrey Wood argue that by privileging easily quantifiable explicit knowledge over subtler socialised forms of tacit knowledge exchange, the impact of the social sciences and applied fields of research, such as business and management studies are vastly underestimated.