<p>Background: Though small enterprises are regarded as engine for the modern economy, they are not pioneers when it comes to implementing new advances like tacit knowledge transfer procedures. Tacit knowledge is often referred as skill, know-how and expertise which are embedded in each individual in an organization. The critical skills and competences of employees are intangible assets and firms’ intellectual resources. In this context, the tacit dimension of knowledge is potentially important to be transferred among individuals, either in tacit or explicit form, to build the core capabilities of small enterprises.</p><p>Problem Discussion: The existent Knowledge Management (KM) research has been mainly focused on big companies, providing little information for small enterprises. Authors believe the lack of attention that those small enterprises are putting on the strategic management of their knowledge is worrying. Tacit knowledge is one of the less explored areas within KM due to the difficulty to codify, formulate or express it. Despite this fact, it is perceived as “some kind of Holy Grail that will enable magnificent things to happen as soon as the codes of tacit knowledge have been deciphered”.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the transference of tacit knowledge among individuals within small segment of small enterprises.</p><p>Method: To gather the information pertaining to tacit knowledge transfer in the small segment of small enterprises, authors have performed a qualitative and explanatory research by conducting several interviews with two small companies.</p><p>Result: Tacit to tacit knowledge transfer has been identified as more relevant than tacit to explicit conversion in the small segment of small enterprises. Therefore the main drivers of the transference of tacit knowledge are learning at personal level and common culture. Time, cost and distance have been recognized as major problems for small enterprises when transferring tacit knowledge.</p>

Background: Though small enterprises are regarded as engine for the modern economy, they are not pioneers when it comes to implementing new advances like tacit knowledge transfer procedures. Tacit knowledge is often referred as skill, know-how and expertise which are embedded in each individual in an organization. The critical skills and competences of employees are intangible assets and firms’ intellectual resources. In this context, the tacit dimension of knowledge is potentially important to be transferred among individuals, either in tacit or explicit form, to build the core capabilities of small enterprises. Problem Discussion: The existent Knowledge Management (KM) research has been mainly focused on big companies, providing little information for small enterprises. Authors believe the lack of attention that those small enterprises are putting on the strategic management of their knowledge is worrying. Tacit knowledge is one of the less explored areas within KM due to the difficulty to codify, formulate or express it. Despite this fact, it is perceived as “some kind of Holy Grail that will enable magnificent things to happen as soon as the codes of tacit knowledge have been deciphered”. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the transference of tacit knowledge among individuals within small segment of small enterprises. Method: To gather the information pertaining to tacit knowledge transfer in the small segment of small enterprises, authors have performed a qualitative and explanatory research by conducting several interviews with two small companies. Result: Tacit to tacit knowledge transfer has been identified as more relevant than tacit to explicit conversion in the small segment of small enterprises. Therefore the main drivers of the transference of tacit knowledge are learning at personal level and common culture. Time, cost and distance have been recognized as major problems for small enterprises when transferring tacit knowledge.

Knowledge and management of that knowledge have been a corner-stone for many enterprises. Creation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge is a difficult task for many organizations. This study identified knowledge transfer mechanism in a start-up company by providing a detail review of existing methods and key challenges associated with current methods. The aim of the study was to provide a comprehensive starting-point for the case company while implementing knowledge transfer mechanism within teams from different departments. This was accomplished by constructing a knowledge transfer framework for the case company. This study also scrutinized several dozens of articles and journals on knowledge transfer topic to get a better overview of existing KT processes and practices. A research gap was found in the context of knowledge transfer phenomena at SME’s and start-up companies. This study shades light on knowledge transfer mechanism and its compatibility with a start-up company. A qualitative single case study was conducted. All empirical data was collected via interviews and observations at a start-up automobile company in Lund (Sweden). Our study contributes to knowledge management literature, by emphasizing vast differences between implementing knowledge transfer activities between MNCs and SMEs or start-up companies.

Driven by the insight that knowledge is power and, therefore, it is the core element for a company to be successful I examined which strategies enhance knowledge-sharing practices and processes among the HEI’s co-workers in order to create new competitive niches. This is especially important in times of ongoing change at an international level as HEIs seem to be increasingly in competition among one another for funds and students' intake. I based my study on the theoretical framework of Nonaka & Takeuchi’s SECI model of knowledge creation (1995) where, according to the authors, the knowledge-sharing takes place in four modes: socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. The main focus of my thesis is the socialization dimension, hence, the face-to-face communication between co-workers and their shared experiences and skills: the ‘tacit to tacit’ knowledge-sharing; the interaction between the different co-workers in the socialization process. Since all knowledge derives from tacit knowledge originally, tacit knowledge is, according to Nonaka/Takeuchi (1995), a person's own personal knowledge and his/her experience and skills; whereas explicit knowledge, on the other hand, is the formal and codified knowledge open to everybody via documents in a systematic language. The study of both literature and empirical data has shown that a special attention must be given to the resource-based view on strategy as it emphasizes the importance of the socialization mode by connecting the respective co-workers with one another in order to create something new. It is such a strategy that focuses on the best deployment of the knowledge resources in order for the institution to take advantage of their co-workers’ embedded, natural, context-specific, difficult to express and attached to the knower’s tacit knowledge. As a result, the key properties of a knowledge-enabling environment (in this thesis called ‘ba’) have been analyzed where tacit knowledge receives its attention by creating space and time for the tacit, hidden, embedded knowledge to emerge. Further field studies in different realities would now be helpful to further extract common patterns for the creation of a sense-making framework of strategy where the tacit dimension of each co-worker is seen to be a unique and remarkable asset for HEIs in order to gain a position of competitive advantage in the market place.

Submitted by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2013-10-09T13:04:34Z No. of bitstreams: 2 bernardo_noronha_v1.pdf: 548527 bytes, checksum: 97432c6f81c0d347435f2924a2ed9313 (MD5) Bernardo_noronha_Entrevistas_v2.pdf: 259829 bytes, checksum: 4f15dd73324bab755c23f5964083c795 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2013-10-09T13:05:03Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 bernardo_noronha_v1.pdf: 548527 bytes, checksum: 97432c6f81c0d347435f2924a2ed9313 (MD5) Bernardo_noronha_Entrevistas_v2.pdf: 259829 bytes, checksum: 4f15dd73324bab755c23f5964083c795 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2013-10-09T13:05:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 bernardo_noronha_v1.pdf: 548527 bytes, checksum: 97432c6f81c0d347435f2924a2ed9313 (MD5) Bernardo_noronha_Entrevistas_v2.pdf: 259829 bytes, checksum: 4f15dd73324bab755c23f5964083c795 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-10-09T13:07:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 bernardo_noronha_v1.pdf: 548527 bytes, checksum: 97432c6f81c0d347435f2924a2ed9313 (MD5) Bernardo_noronha_Entrevistas_v2.pdf: 259829 bytes, checksum: 4f15dd73324bab755c23f5964083c795 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / O conhecimento tem sido estudado há bastante tempo dentro da administração. Entretanto, a partir da década de 1990, com as mudanças nos fundamentos das economias industriais dos recursos naturais para os ativos intelectuais, as empresas passaram a preocupar-se com o conhecimento existente em suas organizações e seu gerenciamento. Um dos aspectos mais relevantes para o gerenciamento do conhecimento é a sua transferência. O conhecimento tácito, por não poder ser estruturado e codificado, é difícil de ser transferido pela organização. O gerenciamento de ativos intangíveis como o conhecimento tácito é percebido como importante capacitação para a competição e como fonte de vantagem competitiva sustentável. O objetivo desse trabalho é identificar, através de um estudo de caso, se os fatores relevantes à transferência do conhecimento tácito estão presentes em uma grande empresa petrolífera brasileira. A presente pesquisa analisa parte relevante da bibliografia acerca da transferência do conhecimento tácito em organizações e coleta evidências para propor um modelo heurístico que possa explicar como ocorre essa transferência de conhecimento tácito, baseado em fatores idiossincráticos e nos fatores organizacionais cultura organizacional, estrutura organizacional e estratégia de gestão do conhecimento. Como resultado, o fator idiossincrático e os fatores estrutura organizacional e estratégia de gestão do conhecimento foram corroborados pelas evidências empíricas, entretanto o fator cultura organizacional não foi identificado. A partir dos resultados alcançados, um novo modelo é proposto. Verifica-se que alguns fatores identificados ajudam a transferência do conhecimento tácito enquanto outros criam barreiras a essa transferência. São sugeridos mecanismos para auxiliar as organizações na transferência do conhecimento tácito. / Knowledge has long been studied in the management field. However, since the shift of the principles of industrial economy from natural resources to intellectual assets in the 1990’s, firms have been concerned about the management of its internal knowledge. The transfer of knowledge is one of the most important issues in knowledge management. Tacit knowledge, that cannot be codified, is more difficult to be transferred through the organization. The management of intangible assets like tacit knowledge is an important source if sustained competitive advantage. The objective of this study is to identify the presence in a major Brazilian oil company of key factors to the tacit knowledge transfer. This research revises relevant part of tacit knowledge transfer literature and gathers evidences to suggest a heuristic model to explaining how tacit knowledge is transferred within the organization, relied on idiosyncratic aspects and organizational aspects like organizational culture, organizational structure and knowledge management strategy. As a result, this work showed that idiosyncratic aspects, organizational structure and knowledge management strategy aspects were corroborated by empirical findings. However, organizational culture aspects were not identified. A new model of tacit knowledge transfer is drawn from the empirical results. Some of aspects identified in the organization studied help the transfer of tacit knowledge while others hamper its flow. Some tools to improve tacit knowledge transfer within organizations are proposed.

Vi rör oss mer och mer mot ett kunskapssamhälle. Kunskap är en av de viktigaste resurserna för företag och för samhället. Kunskap bidrar starkt till organisationers konkurrenskraft och samhällets utveckling genom innovation. Om kunskapen hanteras korrekt och ändamålsenligt för den med sig konkurrensfördelar. En fördelaktig kunskapshantering innebär att rätt kunskap fångas in, att den förmedlas till rätt person som använder den i syfte att förbättra organisatorisk och/eller individuell prestation. Primärt handlar kunskapsöverföring om att skapa värde genom att föra över kunskap från en individ till en annan.    Den här studien utgår från att kunskap har två dimensioner, en tyst och en explicit. Båda delarna kan innebära konkurrensfördelar men det är bara den tysta delen som innebär hållbara konkurrensfördelar. Detta medför att det finns väldigt mycket att vinna på en korrekt hantering av tyst kunskap. Till sin natur är dock den tysta kunskapen svårfångad och personlig, vilket för med sig betydande utmaningar. En av dessa utmaningar är att verkligen gå på djupet och förstå hela överföringsprocessen. När denna förståelse finns behöver man förstå vilka faktorer som påverkar olika delar av processen och vilken effekt de har. I en granskning av tidigare litteratur framkom att det finns relativt god förståelse för vilka faktorer som påverkar delande och överförande av tyst kunskap, medan det var mer bristfälligt vad gäller förvärvande av tyst kunskap.   Detta arbete har genomförts som en kvalitativ enfallsstudie på en kunskapsintensiv organisation. Studien undersökte anställdas upplevelser kring förvärvande av tyst kunskap. Semistrukturerade intervjuer har använts för att samla in det empiriska underlaget. Respondenterna var ingenjörer inom olika högteknologiska områden. Slutsatserna från studien har nåtts genom en tematisk analys.   Slutsatserna visar att flera av de faktorer som är tillämpbara vid delande av tyst kunskap även gäller vid förvärvande. Från resultatet av denna studie kunde vi konstatera att upplevelsen av de mer strukturella faktorerna: kultur, ledarskap, organisationens strategi, den fysiska och digitala omgivningen samt tidsaspekten påverkar förvärvandet av tyst kunskap. Samtidigt som upplevelsen av de mer individuella faktorerna: somatisk och kulturell kunskap, tillit, sociala nätverk, personlighetsdrag och upplevelsen av den som delar tyst kunskap påverkar förvärvandet av den. Flera av dessa faktorer bekräftades från tidigare forskning gällande delande, förvärvande och överförande av tyst kunskap. Unikt för denna studie var att fokus enbart låg på den part som förvärvar (söker och tar emot) tyst kunskap. Studien nådde också induktiva slutsatser kring faktorerna: personlighetsdrag, fysisk och digital omgivningen samt tidsbristens tvåsidiga effekt.