Learning Link in Organizational Tacit Knowledge Creation and Dissemination

Introduction

Knowledge transfer refers to sharing or disseminating of knowledge and providing inputs. In organizational theory, knowledge transfer is the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to another. Knowledge transfer seeks to organize, create, capture or distribute knowledge to ensure its availability for future users. It is not only more than just communication but also it entails complexity. Knowledge transfer is more complex because it resides in organizational members, tools, tasks, and their subnetworks (Argote & Ingram, 2000) and much knowledge in organizations is tacit or hard to articulate (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). In organizations, knowledge transfer is now a common topic but also most difficult. Knowledge transfer in organizations focuses on transferring technological platform, market experience, managerial expertise, advance corporate culture, and other intellectual capital that can improve the competence (Wai, Nguyen, & Yun, 2013). The importance of the transfer of knowledge is growing from both academic point of view and managerial point of view. According to Argote (2012), organizations that are able to transfer knowledge effectively are more productive and able to follow than those who are unable. For Rolland (2000), effective knowledge transfer is the integration by the firm into its own knowledge base of new knowledge that, like cognitive organizational learning, alters its beliefs and its collective routines and which can be usable in other and future activities. Despite many studies provided by some researchers as Boisot and Mack (1995) concerning the dissemination of knowledge in the organization, they nevertheless remain insufficient and insufficiently clear to understand the mechanisms that link individual learning to collective learning within an organization, as well as their role in the creation and transfer of tacit knowledge.

Hence, the aim of this paper is to explore the role of learning and link of it in the tacit knowledge creation and dissemination in organizations. Adopting two-stage approach for this theoretical and conceptual study, we present first the definition of tacit knowledge and its ontological dimension (individual or collective). In a second step, we retrace the process of the transfer of tacit knowledge and focus on the role of learning and the link of it in the creation and transfer of tacit knowledge. In the end, the discussion entails on the challenges and difficulties of this transfer.