Doug Merchant wrote
>But what is tacit knowledge at the organizational level? I suspect this
>includes the learning that is embedded in the "deep structure" of the
>organization.
I would like to add 'culture' as well as 'stucture'. It is the shared
norms, assumptions, behaviours, approaches to problems etc. An example is
when two people in the same organization who have not previously met
face-to-face, meet to do a joint task, such as solve a problem or tackle a
customer issue, that they both instinctively know how to go about the
task, where an outsider might feel frustrated or lost. So, like individual
tacit knowledge - it is real, though fairly intangible.
An interesting management question is how much effort is it worth turning
this organizational tacit knowledge into explicit (to help new hires, or
to hold long term organizational memory as people leave) vs. creating an
environment where individual tacit knowledge can be more rapidly shared
and diffused to create organizational tacit knowledge.
David J. Skyrme Tel/Fax: +44 1635 25 35 45
David Skyrme Associates Limited Highclere, England
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