Exploring the performance of tacit knowledge: How to make ordinary people deliver extraordinary results in teams

Abstract

Our research question is how do we transform individual and collective tacit knowledge into collective, explicit and actionable knowledge in teams?.As our methodological approach, we conducted a longitudinal survey study from 2012 to 2014 to of two teams of staff employed with a Norwegian furniture manufacturer. Each team included designers, production engineers, and salespeople. The survey included the teams and the upper corporate team. The survey monitored the design, production and market processes involved in launching furniture to the marketplace (30 months).The teams decided to rotate their professional roles as designers, production engineers, and salespeople. This rotating role mechanism and socialization process encouraged the sharing of knowledge. The team members transformed their tacit knowledge into collective explicit knowledge, allowing it to deliver innovative results within a time limit. As a theoretical implication, we have found a workable means of transforming tacit, productive, individual and collective knowing into explicit actionable knowledge. Productive team knowledge was converted into tacit managerial knowledge in upper management personnel, enabling the group to translate knowledge into explicit business actions. We propose, as a general theory, that by rotating professional roles within a team individual tacit knowledge can be transformed into collective explicit knowledge. The productive team tacit knowledge that was transferred was identified as expert, nodding, familiarity and holistic knowledge.As a practical implication, we show that rotating professional roles within a team works when a team is afforded enough time to develop a socialization process. When professionals are given direction, trust, responsibility and time to develop results, they break out of their comfort zones and deliver extraordinary results together. As a practical implication, we show that this process can be planned, managed and controlled. Role rotation facilitates both the creation of high-performance teams and the transformation of tacit professional knowledge into explicit knowledge. The transformation of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge helps increase efficiency and effectiveness in knowledge-intensive corporations. Therefore, practically, is it possible to create a corporate flywheel from tacit knowledge? The conversion of productive tacit knowledge into tacit managerial knowledge converted into specific business actions can create an explicit corporate flywheel while maintaining tacit knowledge as a competitive advantage.