A Framework for Sharing and Retaining

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