Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Claire Gubbins et al
that such knowledge will not be provided unless one is prepared to ask for it. In addition to initiative
and a personal drive to ask, it is perceived that possessing an ability to ask questions and get <strong>the</strong>
knowledge source to talk is required.
“you just have to go… you have to go down, find out what’s wrong. The biggest thing is
find out what’s wrong, talk to everybody, get as much information as possible” (Engineer
1)
“well what was instilled in me when I started engineering was if in doubt ask and that
was it and if you don’t know something don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. ……Now I
have a way <strong>of</strong> getting people to talk and I put people at <strong>the</strong>ir ease and I can talk easily to
people” (Engineer 5)
The second set <strong>of</strong> seeker attributes relates to his/her personal motivation for seeking knowledge.
These motivators can be categorised into four <strong>the</strong>mes; beliefs about <strong>the</strong> learning process, concerns
over how o<strong>the</strong>rs perceive <strong>the</strong> seeker in terms <strong>of</strong> competence, beliefs about what is priority in <strong>the</strong>ir job
and confidence levels in own knowledge before applying it to a problem. Mirroring <strong>the</strong> previous
discussion about respondents beliefs about how individuals learn best and <strong>the</strong>ir associated
willingness to share <strong>the</strong>ir knowledge is <strong>the</strong> finding that some respondents do not wish to overly rely on
seeking o<strong>the</strong>rs knowledge but ra<strong>the</strong>r learn that knowledge <strong>the</strong>mselves through on <strong>the</strong> job
experiences, self-directed formal training and trial and error. In <strong>the</strong> same vein, when <strong>the</strong>se
respondents do decide to seek o<strong>the</strong>rs’ knowledge <strong>the</strong>y focus on obtaining specialised knowledge
about <strong>the</strong> problem or knowledge pertaining to an individuals’ problem solving process as opposed to
<strong>the</strong> actual solution.
“Its good to let <strong>the</strong>m become independent too. It’s a better way for <strong>the</strong>m to learn. A bit <strong>of</strong>
both really, is that you let <strong>the</strong>m find a lot <strong>the</strong>mselves and <strong>the</strong>y do generally, if you have a
guy he will learn a lot by himself if he’s allowed to or asked to and he’ll work up to that
level and if a guy has a certain basic knowledge, he’d pick up <strong>the</strong> more specialised stuff
a lot more quickly whereas if a guy comes in <strong>of</strong>f <strong>the</strong> street and you just tell him everything
<strong>the</strong>n he still has no understanding <strong>of</strong> material” (Engineer 5)
Figure 1: Individual Level Influencers on Tacit Knowledge Management Process Success
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