Notice of RetractionKnowledge, Tacit Knowledge and Tacit Knowledge Sharing: Brief Summary of Theoretical Foundation

Abstract

Competitive advantage today is no longer solely measured by an abundance of natural resources or material production. It is generally acknowledged that intangibles such as knowledge now lead to firms being more flexible and thus more competitive. To understand the development of competitive advantage, we must understand knowledge especially tacit knowledge and how it is shared. Therefore, based on review of critical literatures, the author first summarizes current views of the definitions of knowledge to six perspectives and classifies views of tacit knowledge to four types. This paper aimed to set a theoretical foundation for studies on the sharing of tacit knowledge in organizations. The author found that there are two different views on sharing tacit knowledge due to the conceptual differences of it. Then the author investigate the difficulty of sharing tacit knowledge and found that the difficulties in the externalizing and sharing of tacit knowledge are linked to perception, language, time, value and distance. Among which, perception and language are the main difficulties in sharing tacit knowledge.