Sharing knowledge in knowledge-intensive firms

Abstract

Successful knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs) gain competitive advantage from the human and social capital which make up their unique trading assets (Alvesson, 2001; Frenkel et al, 1999; Lei et al, 1999; Newell et al, 2001; Purvis et al, 2001; Starbuck, 1992). Human capital includes individual tacit and explicit knowledge (Nelson and Winter, 1982) brought into the organisation through its knowledge workers, while social capital refers to knowledge that is embedded within the organisational relationships and routines. These forms of capital therefore comprise the knowledge and skills of individual employees and the relationships between these employees. Consequently, sharing knowledge between client projects, for example, becomes critical to the performance of the KIF. There are, however, obstacles to sharing and growing knowledge which is typically distributed throughout the organisation and embedded within its routines (Tsoukas, 1996). This article focuses on the management of what we refer to as the tension between the integration and distribution of knowledge. In particular, it asks how the management of HRM can contribute to overcoming the barriers to sharing knowledge in KIFs. In doing so it adds to the growing research into the HR practices of these organisations (Mehta, 2001; Robertson and O’Malley Hammersley, 2000; Schubert and Ginsburg, 2000; Weigand et al, 2000).