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at. Only 19% (4 of 21) strongly agreed that staff are motivated, while 48% (10 of 21) strongly
agreed that the organisation of their libraries facilitates sharing. Unless there is a certain level
of discontent among leaders with the current situation, it is likely that the state of knowledge
sharing will not improve.
As non profit organisations facing a serious challenge of justifying their relevance, Tanzania
public university libraries need to add more value to their practices. There will be a need for
libraries to create a culture that understands what knowledge is important to support the
changing environment and put that knowledge into action. Little knowledge added to the
routines will have a significant impact. As pointed out in section 2.1. Knowledge assets are
governed by the law of increasing returns which makes it different from the traditional view
of diminishing returns. A culture should not be content with accomplishing daily routines, but
should consider what should be done to add value to the routines. Tanzania public university
libraries should aim at adding value to their users through the acquisition, creation, sharing,
and reuse of any aspect of knowledge relevant to their environment, internally and externally.
They need to think outside the boundaries of current practices and services in order to keep
up with the more rapid pace of change.
When Drucker speaks about knowledge residing in the heads of employee as the most
valuable asset of a 21 st century organisation, he refers to tacit knowledge. It is not procedural
knowledge that is contained in manuals and protocols that libraries need to share to add
value. Libraries need a culture that promotes informal knowledge sharing to facilitate
capturing of tacit knowledge. Because tacit knowledge is communicated indirectly through
human interaction, Nonaka and Takeuchi emphasize the importance of organizational culture
in determining whether or not the exchange and communication of tacit knowledge will
occur, see (Nonaka & Takeuchi,1995). Findings suggest that informal strategies for
knowledge sharing are not used at all in Tanzania public university libraries. Of the 21
respondents who filled in the questionnaire not a single respondent suggested any of the
informal strategies listed in the choices. When they were asked to suggest other strategies
apart from the list of choices given, the answer was still the same, none suggested any
informal strategy.
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