Tacit Knowledge Transfer within Enterprises during Industry Conversion

Abstract

Enterprises are confronted with the challenge of reengineering technological capability during industry conversion. Tacit knowledge accumulated in the former industry is vital for reengineering new technological capability. The research aims at the effective approach to realize tacit knowledge transfer within enterprises during industry conversion. Therefore, the process of tacit knowledge transfer within sample enterprise is analyzed. Meanwhile, the tacit knowledge is classified, and mechanism of its transfer within enterprise is studied. At last, the model is constructed to explain the qualification and time of the tacit knowledge transfer. The studies show that tacit knowledge could be classified into easily explicated tacit knowledge and difficultly explicated tacit knowledge according to the difficulty in its transfer. Moreover, informal communication facilitates the transfer of easily explicated tacit knowledge, and staff transfer is an effective way for the transfer of difficultly explicated tacit knowledge. The studies also indicate that the changing time of the tacit knowledge transfer patterns is unrelated to the efficiency of the transfer patterns, which depends on the intrinsic characteristics of tacit knowledge.