Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

The Problem of Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing is found in most knowledge-management activities, from capturing and localizing knowledge, transferring knowledge and technology, to knowledge creation. The intent in capturing and localizing knowledge in the organization is to enhance the potential for linking and integrating knowledge dispersed throughout the organization, and to improve the efficiency of doing so (Davenport and Prusak, 1996; Choo, 1998). Knowledge and best-practice transfer within and between organizations is not a one-way activity; it is a sharing process, involving trial and error, feedback, and mutual adjustment (Szulanski, 1996; Powell, 1998; Kaeser, 2001). While the early literature on knowledge and technology transfer between and within organizations hinged on a simple model of information communication, new contributions in this area understand knowledge and technology transfer as a model of knowledge sharing and local knowledge (re)-creation (for a review, see von Krogh and Koehne, 1998). In theories of knowledge creation and innovation, the sharing of tacit knowledge among participants in an innovation process precedes the articulation of new concepts, the appraisal and justification of these concepts, and product prototyping (Leonard and Sensiper, 1998; von Krogh, Ichijo, and Nonaka, 2000; Nonaka, von Krogh, and Voelpel, 2006).

Often, apprentice training is used as an example of sharing, especially of tacit knowledge. Sharing tacit knowledge entails ...