Thinning Knowledge: An Interpretive Field Study of Knowledge-Sharing Practices of Firms in Three Multinational Contexts

• Main Authors: Kasper, Helmut, Lehrer, Mark, Mühlbacher, Jürgen, Müller, Barbara
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: Sage 2010
• Subjects: Knowledge Thinning / Cross-Site Knowledge Sharing / Knowledge Management / Multinational Corporations / Personalized and Codified Knowledge
• Online Access: http://epub.wu.ac.at/3860/1/KM_JOMI7_main_text.pdf; http://epub.wu.ac.at/3860/2/KM_JOMI7_Tables_and_Figures.pdf; http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1056492610370366

Knowledge is often tacit and "sticky", i.e. highly context-specific and therefore costly to transfer to a different setting. This paper examines the methods used by firms to facilitate cross-site knowledge sharing by "thinning" knowledge, that is, by stripping knowledge of its contextual richness. An interview-based study of cross-site knowledge sharing in three industries (consulting, industrial materials, and high-tech products) indicated that highly developed knowledge-sharing systems do not necessarily involve extensive codification and recombination of personalized knowledge. Many multinational firms evidently conceive their knowledge-sharing systems with more modest objectives in mind than any large-scale "learning spirals" featuring iterative conversion of personalized knowledge into codified knowledge and vice-versa. A typology of knowledge-thinning systems was derived by interpreting the field study results from the perspective of knowledge-thinning methods used in earlier eras of history. The typology encompasses topographical, statistical and diagrammatic knowledge-thinning systems. (authors' abstract)