Question

1) In which businesses it is easier or more difficult to measure whether experienced employees are sharing their knowledge with younger ones? Discuss using doctors, chefs, nurses, taxi drivers. Under what conditions will experienced employees be or not be willing to share their knowledge with younger ones? Discuss the same for colleagues in a team only one of which will get promoted. Refer to seniority, egalitarian or hierarchical cultures, levels of unemployment, expanding or contracting size of firm, and any other factor you think is relevant, i.e. technological fields, multicultural teams, socialization facilities, etc.

2) Explain, giving an example for each, (i) 100% tacit knowledge, (ii) 75%tacit-25%explicit knowledge, (iii) 25%tacit-75%explicit knowledge, and (iv) 100%explicit knowledge.

Answer 1

Ans 1 : Knowledge Management and sharing is a key for successful organization. Knowledge sharing can been seen very common in domains and professions like Healthcare, Information Technology, Academics etc. For examples incase of doctors the senior doctors give trainings to new doctors and mentor them and guide them during surgeries, testing. Same is with case of nurses the junior nurses are accompanied by senior nurse and they guide the new staff. In case of chefs and other hotel staff the senior employees train the junior staff. Another example of this is IT industry in which the senior software experts share their knowledge and experience with younger ones.

In industries where there is no scope for innovation the employees tend to keep knowledge with themselves and don't share knowledge with the juniors. For example manufacturing industries, production industry etc. Also incased where there tough competition between employees the employees don't share knowledge thinking that this would impact their growth prospects.

Ans 2: 100 % tacit - knowledge gained from personal experiences and mistakes.

75 tacit and 25 explicit - knowledge attained from brainstorming and group discussions

75 explicit and 25 Tacit - collaborative discussions, coaching, mentoring

100 % explicit knowledge - knowledge gained from books, external sources.