Title: Loss in tacit knowledge because of employees attrition

Authors: Vinay Avasthi; Shubhamoy Dey

Addresses: Department of Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management, Indore, MP, India ' Department of Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management, Indore, MP, India

Abstract: Knowledge management systems have tried to elicit tacit knowledge, best practices and relevant experiences from people throughout a company and put this information in a widely available database. Many of the knowledge management initiatives just fail because individuals are incentivised to use the knowledge toward business goals, there is no (or very little) incentive to share or seek knowledge. We look at the problem of tacit knowledge from the consumer's point of view. The mirage of utilising the tacit knowledge can be best solved by making it easy to find the individual with that tacit knowledge. In this paper we use quantitative research methodology to find the extent of tacit knowledge that is within the organisation and whether the organisation uses this knowledge on a regular basis. Based on a survey questionnaire we try understand the usage of tacit knowledge within the organisations. We evaluate whether tacit knowledge has any practical utility or not. We also look at the knowledge contained within the groups and how it is used within the organisations. We also evaluate whether tacit knowledge with an individual diffuses to the individuals most closely working with him.

Keywords: knowledge loss; tacit knowledge; complex organisations; organisational structure; knowledge management systems; individual knowledge; group knowledge; knowledge diffusion.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIM.2015.072541

International Journal of Intercultural Information Management, 2015 Vol.5 No.1/2, pp.1 - 18

Received: 30 Mar 2014
Accepted: 08 Apr 2015
Published online: 18 Oct 2015 *

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