thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

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Knowledge, Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Transfer knowledge do not differ in their knowledge transfer behavior from employees without such knowledge. Another question that arises in the context of knowledge loss and the typologies presented in the last sections is what kind of knowledge transfer has to be looked at, or, in other words, the transfer of what kind of knowledge should be investigated. As argued before, tacit knowledge is hard to document, and knowledge transfer through extensive personal contact seems to be the only way it can be prevented from being lost. Thus, it seems promising to focus on such tacit knowledge. On the other hand, explicit knowledge can be just as valuable as tacit knowledge, and should not be neglected. Depending on the context, any kind or type of knowledge can be valuable for the organization and at risk of being lost, no matter if it is explicit, tacit, unproven, causally ambiguous, procedural, semantic, or conditional. Thus, the type of knowledge transferred that is studied should be rather broad, as there is no knowledge characteristic or type of knowledge that is of larger or lesser interest. Of course, at a later step, it would be very interesting to investigate if results differ for different kinds of knowledge or knowledge characteristics. Related to this, the question of knowledge transfer situations to be studied occurs. As stated in the section on knowledge management (1.1.4), there are many possible transfer channels or situations, such as electronic databases, email, face-to-face-conversations, knowledge-fairs, mentoring programs, or communities of practice. Again, the focus should not be too specific, as critical knowledge can be transferred in all of these situations, and focusing on mentoring programs for example would imply focusing on a very specific sample of employees and a very specific sample of organizations that actually foster such relationships. “Everyday knowledge transfer”, that is, the naturally occurring, spontaneous, unstructured knowledge transfer between colleagues (Davenport & Prusak, 1998), is not tied to a specific sample, but should happen in any organization and team. Encouraging and improving such spontaneous knowledge exchange 30
Knowledge, Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Transfer is one of the essential elements of knowledge management (Davenport & Prusak, 1998), and models of knowledge retention strategies claim that knowledge practices must be part of day-today work (DeLong, 2004; Leibold & Voelpel, 2006). Furthermore, everyday knowledge transfer is a good choice as, according to Davenport and Prusak (1998), it is local (albeit fragmentary). As, according to DeLong (2004), the knowledge retention of individual employees’ knowledge is also “local”, this seems an appropriate study context. Thus, the focus of this dissertation will be on everyday knowledge transfer, without a specification of certain types or characteristics of knowledge or specification of a certain type of employee sample. More concretely, the focus will be on everyday knowledge transfer within work teams, that is with colleagues working in the same work group or team. Before I now proceed to the first study and paper, I would like to briefly position my work within the broader field of knowledge management so as to better enable the evaluation of the relevance and importance of research questions and results. 1.3. Positioning Within Knowledge Management In section 1.1.4., I described knowledge management as a process which involves several activities with the aim to use an organization’s knowledge to its benefit. In the present section however, I am considering knowledge management as a research field that is divided into several subfields within which the present dissertation is to be positioned. Figure 1 depicts an attempt of such a positioning within the field of knowledge management. The field of knowledge management, in equivalence to the process knowledge management, can be divided into four subfields, namely knowledge creation, knowledge storage and retrieval, knowledge transfer, and knowledge application (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). The present research is, of course, situated within the field of knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer, then, can be 31
Page 1 and 2: Knowledge Transfer in Teams and Its
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Multilevel Investigation of Anteced
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Intergenerational Knowledge Transfe
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Preventing Knowledge Loss When Empl
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the demographic change. Accordingly
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analysis was dyadic knowledge trans
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questions. The limitations that wil
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would be very different than for a
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“there are situations where knowl
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employing the distinctions recommen
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valuable addition to the existing l
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covers a very specific area of know
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the importance of including lower l
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Foss, N. J., Husted, K., & Michailo
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Watson, S., & Hewett, K. (2006). A
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