Abstract
As organisational knowledge is greatly dependant on the tacit knowledge that its employees possess, it is important to pursue strategies that encourage sharing of employees’ tacit knowledge. However, tacit knowledge sharing can be better promoted by understanding the barriers and enablers of tacit knowledge transfer. As universities are seen as the flag-bearers of knowledge creation and dissemination, this paper focuses on identifying the barriers and enablers of tacit knowledge transfer in universities. A qualitative research method was utilised for this study in which interviews of academics from four Australian universities were carried out. The reporting of data is based on a structured interpretative approach drawing demonstrative examples from the interview transcripts. The findings suggest that human, social and culture factors are addressed to ensure successful transfer of tacit knowledge. For effective transfer of tacit knowledge, universities need to create conditions that strengthen the enablers and suppress the barriers.
Highlights
Much of the knowledge required to succeed in realworld tasks is tacit in nature [1]
Despite the progress that has been made in understanding the nature of explicit knowledge, little has been done to explore the transfer of tacit knowledge especially by academics in universities in Australia
An interviewee illustrated differing barriers that deter the transfer of tacit knowledge ‘Politics, mind sets, personalities’ to name a few
Summary
Much of the knowledge required to succeed in realworld tasks is tacit in nature [1]. Tacit knowledge focuses on ‘knowing how’ rather than ‘knowing that’ [2]. Tacit knowledge is repeatedly acknowledged as an intangible resource [6], which implies that it does not have a physical presence whereas on the other end explicit knowledge is tangible and has a physical presence. Tacit knowledge, which is embedded in the minds of employees, is difficult to transfer. Even if these employees are willing to part with their tacit knowledge, there are barriers of tacit knowledge transfer in the universities context. In the case of universities, most tacit knowledge is located within its academic and research employees. This study plugs that scarcity gap by not just focussing on knowledge sharing but on tacit knowledge transfer in the universities’ context, from the perspective of Australian university academics. The last section of the paper summarises the conclusion, outlines limitations and avenues for future research
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