Tacit Knowledge Transfer Between Organizational Units: Investigating How Different Knowledge-Heavy Industries Overcome Knowledge Tacitness
(2021) BUSN09 20211Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- Organizational strategists are working on their company’s ability to absorb and transfer knowledge between organizational units, their so-called absorptive capacity, to better react to environmental changes and, hence, strengthen their sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the sharing of tacit know-how is considered to be difficult because it is contextual and experience-based, and, therefore, tends to ‘stick’ to the individual owning it. For industries that heavily rely on quality-type tasks in order to be competitive in the market, overcoming barriers when transferring tacit knowledge is especially relevant. Consequently, this thesis focuses on tacit knowledge transfer between organizational units in different knowledge-heavy... (More)
- Organizational strategists are working on their company’s ability to absorb and transfer knowledge between organizational units, their so-called absorptive capacity, to better react to environmental changes and, hence, strengthen their sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the sharing of tacit know-how is considered to be difficult because it is contextual and experience-based, and, therefore, tends to ‘stick’ to the individual owning it. For industries that heavily rely on quality-type tasks in order to be competitive in the market, overcoming barriers when transferring tacit knowledge is especially relevant. Consequently, this thesis focuses on tacit knowledge transfer between organizational units in different knowledge-heavy industries.
This process has been investigated through a combination of a quantitative survey and qualitative semi-structured interviews. Throughout this mixed method approach, the findings of both investigations mostly identify similarities across knowledge-heavy industries. Firstly, a surprising result has been that the absorptive capacity of companies from different knowledge-heavy industries, as well as their perceived barriers when trying to overcome transfer difficulties, are very alike. Furthermore, the same two main strategies to overcome those barriers have been detected across the investigated industries: 1) the personalization strategy, encouraging informal networks to increase knowledge exchange and social ties between teams, departments, and hierarchies; and 2) the codification strategy, a more formal approach of making knowledge explicit, to store codified information in a database and make it accessible at any time. Those two approaches are commonly used across all investigated knowledge-heavy industries, yet emphasized differently. Which strategic focus is placed, depends on the individual company’s understanding of tacit knowledge transfer, and their perceived value of organizational learning.
In general, these findings add to prior research about tacit knowledge transfer. Providing evidence of similarities between knowledge-heavy industries, this study mainly contributes to the generalization of research about absorptive capacity, as an enabler for tacit knowledge transfer, and encourages managers to pursue continuous cross-industry dialogue. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9050610
- author
- Kremer, Karola LU and Steudten, Pauline LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- BUSN09 20211
- year
- 2021
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- absorptive capacity, cross-organizational communication, knowledge-heavy industries, knowledge management, networks, platforms, tacit knowledge transfer
- language
- English
- id
- 9050610
- date added to LUP
- 2021-06-29 10:28:50
- date last changed
- 2021-06-29 10:28:50
@misc{9050610,
abstract = {{Organizational strategists are working on their company’s ability to absorb and transfer knowledge between organizational units, their so-called absorptive capacity, to better react to environmental changes and, hence, strengthen their sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the sharing of tacit know-how is considered to be difficult because it is contextual and experience-based, and, therefore, tends to ‘stick’ to the individual owning it. For industries that heavily rely on quality-type tasks in order to be competitive in the market, overcoming barriers when transferring tacit knowledge is especially relevant. Consequently, this thesis focuses on tacit knowledge transfer between organizational units in different knowledge-heavy industries.
This process has been investigated through a combination of a quantitative survey and qualitative semi-structured interviews. Throughout this mixed method approach, the findings of both investigations mostly identify similarities across knowledge-heavy industries. Firstly, a surprising result has been that the absorptive capacity of companies from different knowledge-heavy industries, as well as their perceived barriers when trying to overcome transfer difficulties, are very alike. Furthermore, the same two main strategies to overcome those barriers have been detected across the investigated industries: 1) the personalization strategy, encouraging informal networks to increase knowledge exchange and social ties between teams, departments, and hierarchies; and 2) the codification strategy, a more formal approach of making knowledge explicit, to store codified information in a database and make it accessible at any time. Those two approaches are commonly used across all investigated knowledge-heavy industries, yet emphasized differently. Which strategic focus is placed, depends on the individual company’s understanding of tacit knowledge transfer, and their perceived value of organizational learning.
In general, these findings add to prior research about tacit knowledge transfer. Providing evidence of similarities between knowledge-heavy industries, this study mainly contributes to the generalization of research about absorptive capacity, as an enabler for tacit knowledge transfer, and encourages managers to pursue continuous cross-industry dialogue.}},
author = {{Kremer, Karola and Steudten, Pauline}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Tacit Knowledge Transfer Between Organizational Units: Investigating How Different Knowledge-Heavy Industries Overcome Knowledge Tacitness}},
year = {{2021}},
}