Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intellectual ...

Palmira Juceviciene and Vyda Mozuriuniene
Figure 4: Organization‘s knowing (from <strong>the</strong> perspective <strong>of</strong> different levels and explicity or tacity)
enhancing at Company X subsidiaries
What possibilities and problems, related to organization’s knowing, can be observed from
<strong>the</strong> data received?
Successful work performance requires a few times more organizational knowing than organization’s
informal knowing. However, <strong>the</strong> fact that <strong>the</strong> latter is required at each level (individual, group, and <strong>the</strong>
entire organization’s) is a serious basis to go fur<strong>the</strong>r into organization‘s knowing. This does not only
support <strong>the</strong> statement “Knowledge exists on a spectrum“, formulated by Leonard and Sensiper (1998,
p.113), but also raises doubts about <strong>the</strong> existing desire <strong>of</strong> some employers to get an employee <strong>of</strong> a
narrow specialization, able to work productively almost from <strong>the</strong> first employment day. At <strong>the</strong> same
time, one can state, no entire organization’s competence and even no competencies at particular
“work places“ can be completely predicted.
The fact that <strong>the</strong> level <strong>of</strong> informal knowing at <strong>the</strong> organization is much lower than <strong>the</strong> organizational
knowing allows stating that not only <strong>the</strong> surveyed company or its subsidiaries, but also <strong>the</strong> employees
<strong>the</strong>mselves do not pay enough attention to acquiring/creating informal knowing. This has also been
confirmed by <strong>the</strong> data received that indicate how much <strong>the</strong> respective knowledge is enhanced:
organizational knowing “considerably” and “to a moderate extent”, and informal knowing only “to a
moderate extent”, or “not much”. Organizational knowing is at a similar level at all <strong>the</strong> three
researched enterprises, but <strong>the</strong> informal parts <strong>of</strong> knowing in <strong>the</strong>se organizations differ. This once
again confirms that <strong>the</strong> creation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> informal part <strong>of</strong> knowing is spontaneous. Is this good or bad?
Apparently, it is good, since <strong>the</strong> fact that successful performance requires informal knowing does not
mean that it is possible to foresee in advance what type <strong>of</strong> informal knowledge would be required
when performing work in a particular context. An employee himself/herself, or groups <strong>of</strong> employees,
are <strong>the</strong> actors who use <strong>the</strong>ir informal knowing to compensate <strong>the</strong> lack <strong>of</strong> organizational knowing,
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