wiki says:
“ Tacit knowledge can be defined as skills, ideas and experiences that are possessed by people but are not codified and may not necessarily be easily expressed.[5] With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact, regular interaction,[6] and trust. This kind of knowledge can only be revealed through practice in a particular context and transmitted through social networks.[7] To some extent it is "captured" when the knowledge holder joins a network or a community of practice.[6]”
The distinction appears to be the implication of OP that the ‘theory’ is not communicable, thus “first generation” workers need to be around. But you can clarify (am interested in your views) (a) what’s your crit of TD and TK, and (b) the matter that I missed, the “something very important” (which is not TK transfer).
p.s. “we know more than we can tell” is pretty much the tldr of T.D.
1. "We know [the manner in which we carry out a task] more than we can tell [...but are unable to articulate the procedure by which we do it]." 2. "We [can do] more than we [can explain in writing or verbally]."
The second statement is uncontroversial. No one would say that the ability to ride a bicycle logically entails the ability to explain how we do those things in writing such that, by reading alone, someone could learn to ride a bicycle.
But this is only mysterious if you consider the second statement to be a paraphrase of the first. I don't think that it is. The first statement suggests a mystery; it's as if we are always following rules when we act skillfully, but are sometimes unable to articulate those rules.
But this is a mistaken view. Not all skillful performance is rule-governed. In fact, most isn't (statement two). And that is easy to forget, but does not require a theory of "tacit knowledge".
The straightforward parsing of that sentence for me is: We are not capable of completely expressing our (personal) knowledge with language.