<p>Today we are living in a knowledge-society where knowledge sharing is of utmost importance for companies in order to keep their competitiveness. Therefore, it is a much debated issue - in both the academic and the corporate world - in what way one should handle the knowledge which continuously is created within companies. The aim of this study is to describe how practitioners share tacit knowledge within a large knowledge company. By that we aim to get an answer to how the chosen theoretical models regarding tacit knowledge relate to the empirical world. In this study we will focus on tacit knowledge in contrast to explicit one. Further we will not study knowledge sharing between organisations but concentrate on this process within them. We chose to approach the purpose of this study in a qualitative way by conducting interviews within a large knowledge-firm. The company was Systems Integration within the Ericsson-group where we held interviews with four persons familiar with knowledge. Furthermore, we have perceived that theories concerning the knowledge-sharing process are relatively fragmented. Therefore, we have built a model which links the different theories together in order to give a better overview of the whole process. Having conducted the study, we found that the case company to some extent handlesknowledge in line with the theories chosen. Furthermore, we came to the conclusion that some modifications in the model are necessary in order to achieve a successful knowledge-sharing process.</p>

Purpose – This research focuses on finding the reasons, why members from different sectors join a cross-sector/multi-stakeholder CSR network and what motivates them to share (or not to share) their knowledge of CSR and their best practices. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the largest cross-sector CSR network in Sweden. The sample base of 15 people was chosen to be able to represent a wider variety of members from each participating sectors. As well as the CEO of the intermediary organization was interviewed. The interviews were conducted via email and telephone. Findings – The findings include several reasons linked to the business case of CSR such as stakeholder pressure, competitive advantage, legitimacy and reputation as well as new reasons like the importance of CSR, and the access of further knowledge in the field. Further reasons are in line with members wanting to join a network, such as access to contact or having personal contacts. As to why members are sharing their CSR knowledge, the findings indicate to inspire others, to show CSR commitment, to be visible, it leads to business opportunity and the access of others knowledge, and because it was requested. Reasons for not sharing their knowledge would be the lack of opportunity, lack of time and the lack of experience to do so. Originality/value – The research contributes to existing studies, which focused on Corporate Social Responsibility and cross-sector networking as well as to inter-organizational knowledge sharing in the field of CSR.

Background Previous research in the area of knowledge management shows that projectbased organizations often struggle with their employees resistance to shareknowledge with colleagues for reasons of self-interest. Other research show thatimplementing incentives to stimulate knowledge sharing behaviors has beenproven efficient. However, the fact that no previous research has touched uponthe topic in the context of project based organizations, motivated us to immerseourselves in the area. Purpose The purpose of this study was to map how incentives stimulate knowledgesharing in project based organizations. Method A qualitative single-case study performed with semi-structured interviews on thedepartment of medical systems at project based Sectra AB. Conclusion The study highlights the value of combining incentives with clan control formotivating knowledge sharing in project based organizations. It indicates thatproject based organizations with help from incentives can stimulate knowledgesharing behaviors, both directly and indirectly.

An electronic advice network provides employees opportunities to tap diverse experts within the organization at an unprecedented speed and scale. It is formed when an advice seeker initiates an online discussion thread joined by members of various communities, each specializing in a specific domain. This dissertation recognizes the substantial gap in our understanding of how to best harness the performance potential of expertise diversity provided through an electronic advice network within a firm. It thus investigates the process by and conditions under which expertise diversity in an electronic advice network promotes the advice seeker’s learning and performance. A field study was conducted via multi-methods including observation, interviews, and survey at a global company running discussion forums spanning internal virtual communities. The unit of analysis was at the discussion thread level. 190 discussion threads comprising 1,200 participants and associated outcomes (rated by their respective advice seekers) were analyzed. Findings suggest that, for the seeker to realize the performance potential of diverse inputs, discussion participants should facilitate the seeker’s learning by engaging in collective elaboration—articulating the differences and relevance of their diverse inputs. The seeker learned and performed the least when discussion participants were highly diverse but did not engage in collective elaboration. Discussion participants engaged in collective elaboration to the extent that they had previously established shared syntactic and semantic understanding of each other’s expertise domains through participation in each other’s communities. This dissertation contributes to the virtual communities literature by unearthing the relationships between expertise diversity and the advice seeker’s learning and performance and explaining when and how the seeker benefits from the diverse knowledge shared through an electronic advice network. The moderating role of collective elaboration explains why prior research may have found no or even a negative relationship between expertise diversity and discussion outcomes. It also contributes to the team literature by offering boundary conditions for the previous findings on expertise diversity and common ground. The collective elaboration construct can be also adopted by team diversity researchers to better understand where a disruption in the chain of group-level information processing may occur in some diverse teams. / text

This qualitative field study investigated cross-site knowledge sharing in a small sample of multinational corporations in three different MNC business contexts (global, multidomestic, transnational). The results disclose heterogeneous "worlds" of MNC knowledge sharing, ultimately raising the question as to whether the whole concept of MNC knowledge sharing covers a sufficiently unitary phenomenon to be meaningful. We derive a non-exhaustive typology of MNC knowledge-sharing practices: self-organizing knowledge sharing, technocratic knowledge sharing, and best practice knowledge sharing. Despite its limitations, this typology helps to elucidate a number of issues, including the latent conflict between two disparate theories of MNC knowledge sharing, namely "sender-receiver" and "social learning" theories (Noorderhaven & Harzing, 2009). More generally, we develop the term "knowledge contextualization" to highlight the way that firm-specific organizational features pre-define which knowledge is considered to be of special relevance for intra-organizational sharing. (authors' abstract)

This paper explains what recognition the auditor has of theoretical judgment and decision making subjects surrounding the audit process. The auditors’ judgment and decision making skills seem to be more challenged when it comes to estimating their clients’ valuations. Therefore, the audit process of fair value measures (FVM) is used to charterer the recognition more clearly. Attention to this topic is warranted for several reasons. First, FVM was implemented on the Swedish market in 2005 and is relatively recent to Swedish auditors. Second, to our knowledge no similar study, regarding the Swedish audit firms, has been conducted within this area. Third, the evidence, drawn from previous research, of what recognition the auditors have of the theoretical judgment and decision making subjects seem to be more indirect than direct and we also extend the previous research. We find, through semi-structured interviews with employees of the ‘Big four’, that both judgment and decision making are acknowledged as possible issues. However, we also find that certain areas within these two categories are unrecognized to be of immediate concern.

The necessity of managing the tacit knowledge sharing is becoming more significant because of the upcoming demographic changes facing companies all over the industrialized part of the world. The so called baby boomers born in the middle part of the 20th century will soon reach the retirement age and this is anticipated to create an extensive loss of knowledge. In light of that, companies face a dilemma when over bridging the knowledge gap between their more experienced senior employees who have accumulated plenty of knowledge and the novel ones. It opens the discussion concerning how to “capture” that knowledge since it is the competitive advantage in the contemporary world. This is particularly sensible for knowledge-based firms which are the main focus of this study. Scholars have developed different approaches of the knowledge sharing phenomenon, but still there is a lack of understanding regarding how this abstract process should be supported in a daily basis. This work investigates the factors that aid or hinder the knowledge process within consulting firms as a prerequisite to reach a greater awareness of the particular setting that will foster the sharing. Supported by a theoretical background, this was accomplished by following a systems approach, favoring qualitative methods. The empirical data was collected using semistructured qualitative interviews within the headquarter offices of Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Stockholm, Sweden. The exploratory results suggest that by converging specific aspects, consulting firms can overcome the most common barriers when sharing knowledge transfer. Furthermore, it is pointed out the positive conditions a firm has to develop as well as Theoretical and Managerial implications.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake occurred 16 miles west of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The earthquake and ensuing destruction killed as many as 300,000 persons and displaced as many as 1.5 million more creating a humanitarian crisis and economic disaster of enormous scale. As the earthquake was in close proximity to the U.S. mainland, it was determined that three U.S. agencies would take leading roles: USAID would coordinate and lead the relief effort, the U.S. State Department would handle diplomatic issues and the Department of Defense (DoD) would take the lead on logistics and security issues. One social networking tool used by the DoD and relief organizations to share information and coordinate relief efforts was the All Partners Access Network (APAN). Communications between the various agencies were recorded and include chat logs, blogs and e-mails. A content analysis was conducted to develop insight into the way relief workers used APAN when responding during the Haiti humanitarian assistance / disaster relief (HA/DR) operation. Coding and analyzing the communication data collected during the relief effort provided insight into how individuals and organizations used APAN, a social networking tool, to collaborate during the disaster. Suggestions for improving APAN are discussed.

In today’s business world, strategic alliances are becoming a common method for achieving a competitive advantage towards industry rivals. This tool, however, is not a guarantee for success as the failure rate of alliances is between 30-70%. Even with this high failure rate, strategic alliances continue to grow and becoming more and more common. Through strategic alliances, the organizations can gain the possibility to access, acquire and implement new knowledge from its partners as a step to achieve competitive advantage. However, by engaging in alliances or inter-firm arrangements they also place themselves in the risk zone of giving away knowledge, both intentionally or unintentionally, which is also known as knowledge leakage. Studies have shown that trust is important in knowledge sharing, and managers must understand the role of trust and distrust in this equation, in order to be able to successfully achieve an effective and trustworthy knowledge transfer for a firm. Previous research has focused mainly on the effects of trust on knowledge sharing and a few exceptions have focused on knowledge leakage. However, these articles have been ignoring the factor of distrust. The purpose of this thesis therefore lies in investigating the effect the dimensions of both trust and distrust simultaneously have on knowledge sharing and leakage, as theory view trust and distrust as separate but co-existing concepts. The dimensions chosen for investigation are goodwill trust, competence trust, goodwill distrust and competence distrust. In order to achieve this purpose, a quantitative research method was used. A questionnaire was developed and sent out to Swedish firms operating in knowledge-intensive industries according to Eurostat. 55 companies fully completed the questionnaire. From this a factor analysis and regression analysis was conducted in order to fulfill the purpose of this thesis. This thesis found that goodwill trust has a positive effect on knowledge sharing and negative effect on knowledge leakage. Competence trust and competence distrust was found to have a positive relationship with knowledge leakage. Also, the authors developed the dimensions of goodwill and competence distrust as well as empirically proved their existence. This thesis contributes by acknowledging the importance of both concepts, trust and distrust, and also providing managers with an idea of what dimensions of trust and distrust are important when associating it to knowledge exchange.

Knowledge is often tacit and "sticky", i.e. highly context-specific and therefore costly to transfer to a different setting. This paper examines the methods used by firms to facilitate cross-site knowledge sharing by "thinning" knowledge, that is, by stripping knowledge of its contextual richness. An interview-based study of cross-site knowledge sharing in three industries (consulting, industrial materials, and high-tech products) indicated that highly developed knowledge-sharing systems do not necessarily involve extensive codification and recombination of personalized knowledge. Many multinational firms evidently conceive their knowledge-sharing systems with more modest objectives in mind than any large-scale "learning spirals" featuring iterative conversion of personalized knowledge into codified knowledge and vice-versa. A typology of knowledge-thinning systems was derived by interpreting the field study results from the perspective of knowledge-thinning methods used in earlier eras of history. The typology encompasses topographical, statistical and diagrammatic knowledge-thinning systems. (authors' abstract)