A Framework for Sharing and Retaining
Date
2011-06-15
Authors
Solomon, Jacob
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Abstract
Organisations have in recent times realised that they base their competitive
advantage on knowledge. Knowledge in the form of people’s expertise is seen as an
organisation’s greatest value creating asset. Tacit knowledge in the form of
employees’ skill and their “know how” gives any organisation a competitive
advantage. It is this cognitive knowledge that must be shared, retained and
communicated within an organisation in order to create a sustainable competitive
advantage by growing the tacit knowledge of the organisation as a whole. This
valuable tacit knowledge needs to be made explicit to individuals within the
organisation but obscure to those outside the organisation in order to hinder other
organisations imitating or developing it to their own benefit.
The main purpose of this study was to determine what methods of knowledge sharing
can be used to explicate and share knowledge in particular types of industry. The
study was done by means of a literature review and considered alternative methods
of knowledge sharing to propose a framework for sharing and retaining knowledge
within organisations in particular types of industries.
The current research highlights what style of learning an organisation can adopt to be
most effective in the industry in which they operate and suggests various methods
that organisations can use for sharing and retaining knowledge within the knowledge
conversion cycle. The main finding of this research presents a theoretical foundation
as a conceptual framework that combines different methods for sharing and retaining
knowledge within the knowledge conversion cycle and the style of learning that an
organisation can adopt to be effective in that particular business environment. This
framework should enable managers to identify difficulties of sharing tacit knowledge
and to identify effective methods of sharing and retaining tacit knowledge within their
organisation
Description
MBA - WBS
Keywords
Knowledge management, Organisational knowledge