Discussion

Abstract

One must, after reading the above two quotes, make up one’s own mind as to the composition of tacit knowledge, for it seems Cavusgil et al., (2003) are certainly not discussing the same tacit knowledge as von Krogh et al. (2000). The tacit knowledge studied herein is more akin to that discussed by the latter set of authors, that is to say a form of knowledge that is passed through what Nonaka and colleagues have labelled socialisation in intimate person to person settings. In time the organisation builds up a stock of such soft knowledge, which is lost when staff leave and not replaced again either until further skilled staff arrive, or the ones remaining acquire it through experience over time. Whilst earlier work in this empirical study examined the phenomenon of tacit knowledge in depth (including a multitude of definitions as revealed in Appendix A), what was ultimately settled upon for the empirical research in this study was that of articulable implicit managerial IT knowledge.