Literature research to Knowledge Sharing and Learning

Hello and a warm welcome to Knowledge Based Diamond’s sixth blogpost! 😍 Crazy how fast time has gone and to think that today started the last study period for this academic year. First some exciting news. Our team grew with one new member. It is our pleasure to warmly welcome Kirsi Helminen to join our amazing KBD team! 💎 Hopefully Kirsi gets the opportunity to introduce herself in the next blogpost so you can also get to know her a bit better. 😊

The main idea of this blogpost is to approach our assignment’s topic from a more theoretical view. In other words, in this post we’ll dig deep to literature. The purpose of this is to deepen our own understanding and knowledge about our topic which was “How to boost knowledge sharing and learning within and between projects at Solita”. We believe that we will benefit a lot from this literature research and hopefully as a result of this, our next more empirical blogposts will be even better. Also, just to make clear and remind all you readers, our assignment’s topic has changed a bit. In the second post we wrote that our assignment is about boosting knowledge sharing in software projects. The main idea is still the same, but we aren’t focusing only on software projects. The focus is more generally within projects and between projects. 

 

Among resources and capabilities that may help organizations obtain competitive advantages, knowledge is the primary strategic resource for organizations in a knowledge-based economy (Grant 1996). To create value for an organization, knowledge must flow through and be embedded in the organization (Chuang et al. 2016). Knowledge-intensive teamwork, which comprises collaborative activities that locate, share, create, and apply knowledge among a group of people (Chung & Jackson 2013), is one of the central processes through which organizations transform knowledge held by individuals into intellectual capital for achieving competitive advantage (Chuang et al. 2016). As we were interviewing different persons from Solita, it became clear for us that all the above-mentioned things should be clear for all Solita’s members. This means that once a person is recruited to Solita, it should be clear for him or her that Solita is a knowledge intensive organization and knowledge sharing and learning is the key for success. 

 

Team knowledge acquisition occurs when the team gains knowledge it did not previously have (Chuang et al. 2016). It involves locating sources of useful knowledge outside the team, transferring new knowledge into the team, and incorporating the new knowledge into the team’s behavioral repertoire (Jackson et al. 2006). In Solita’s case this happens for example while starting a new project. There might be a situation where a new code language has to be used but the project members don’t know it. In this case the project team looks for a person outside the project team that could educate them to the language. The importance of external knowledge sources to teams is supported by research showing that teams with stronger external network ties are more productive (Chung & Jackson 2013). Team knowledge sharing refers to activities that aid the transfer of knowledge among team members (Jackson et al. 2006). It helps a team remember and exploit lessons learned and solve technical problems more effectively by ensuring that existing knowledge flows among team members with different types of specialized and distinct expertise (Grant 1996).

 

The primary objectives of competency-enhancing organizational practices for knowledge-intensive teamwork are ensuring that teams are staffed with members who have and continuously improve the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform knowledge-intensive teamwork. As mentioned above, Solita is a knowledge intensive organization, and it emphasizes it when recruiting new employees into the company. Basically it is a company policy to share knowledge and learning and also continuously improve and become better at sharing knowledge.  Working in knowledge-intensive settings demands a breadth of technical knowledge and skills, but the required competencies go well beyond these to include teamwork knowledge and skills (Chuang et al. 2016). Teamwork skills facilitate effective interactions with collaborators. Through collaborative interactions, team members and the team as a whole can acquire and share new and valuable knowledge. In addition, a team can increase its chance to make contact with knowledge sources by selecting members who have good interpersonal relationships with people within and outside the organization (Chung & Jackson, 2013). Further, adaptation skills help the team recognize dynamic conditions and respond to them by continuously searching for new information and knowledge (Jackson et al. 2006).

 

Practices that evaluate individual competencies can help ensure that individual team members have the necessary technical and teamwork skills, while training can be used to improve the competencies needed for team knowledge acquisition and team knowledge sharing (e.g., interpersonal and teamwork skills) and improve members’ ability to learn from others (Jackson et al. 2006). Traditional training programs that identify needed knowledge in advance and deliver it to individual employees might not be sufficient in building the competencies of knowledge-based teams, which work in dynamic, high-velocity environments (Chuang et al. 2016). Rather, training practices should help teams develop and update technical and interpersonal know-how to facilitate learning on an “as-needed, just-in-time” basis (Jackson et al. 2006). 

 

The role of the company leaders is enormous when it comes to firm’s knowledge sharing policies. Empowering leadership refers to leader behaviors that stress the significance of work, express confidence in followers’ performance, encourage followers’ participation in decision making, and reduce frustration by removing resource constraints and administrative obstacles that interfere with performance (Locke et al. 2006). In knowledge-intensive work contexts, the essential ingredient of empowering leadership is leading knowledge workers to lead themselves by sharing power with them and fostering their feelings of self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation (Conger & Kanungo 1998; Locke et al. 2006).

 

Team knowledge activities require an array of self-initiated actions, which empowering leadership promotes. An empowering leader points out work’s meaningfulness to team members by helping them understand their value and contribution to organizational effectiveness (Conger & Kanungo 1988). This in turn motivates members to engage in knowledge activities that are valuable to their team and organization. An empowering leader sets high expectations for performance and serves as a role model by searching for new insights, taking time for crucial reflection, sharing his or her knowledge openly, and so on. Consequently, team members who identify with the leader may feel confident to self-initiate knowledge activities despite the formidable challenges that typically characterize knowledge work. Knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing are likely to be enhanced when team members observe that their leader actually uses their suggestions when making decisions. Seeing the impact of their ideas, team members experience greater task meaningfulness which further encourages them to engage in acquiring and sharing relevant knowledge. An empowering leader teaches team members how to solve problems on their own and helps them see inadequacies in their knowledge, which in turn may prompt them to acquire new information and expertise. An empowering leader who coaches team members to solve problems together also facilitates knowledge sharing amongst them. (Chuang et al. 2016)

 

As mentioned in the beginning of this blogpost, the meaning of this post is to invite reflection to our own thoughts considering our assignment’s topic. We have done the interviews to Solita’s employees and now we will start to form our solutions to the research question and topic. This literature research offers good framework and theory for us and backs up our upcoming solution. We will tell more about the interviews that we have conducted in the coming blogposts. This post is already quite long so more information will come from the interviews later. 

 

Thank you for reading our blog! 💙 Best wishes and expect to hear from us soon,

 

KBD team 💎

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We got some feedback from the course personnel regarding this blogpost. The feedback said that here the role of leader is highlighted, which suggest that they would be one relevant user group. Leaders of course can be on different levels, for example team leaders or organization leaders. As our course assignment is based on knowledge sharing between project and in projects, the highlighted leader role would mean in our case project managers or project leaders. However, as we mentioned before, Solita is a firm that expects that all its members are willing to share knowledge and commit to way of working in which knowledge sharing is given. This means that in Solita’s case, the leadership of the firm has succeeded in making an atmosphere where employees understand how important knowledge sharing truly is. It was very educational to read from literature how big of a role the leaders of a firm have in creating an atmosphere where the employees understand and appreciate the importance of good knowledge sharing. We feel that after doing this literature review, we can say with confidence that Solita is a firm with good leaders, at least considering this topic. 

 

The purpose of our MVP solution, which is discussed on the next blogpost, is to help all Solita’s employees in knowledge sharing between and in projects. Hence, leaders aren’t the main focus for our MVP. The purpose for this literature review was to highlight different aspects of knowledge sharing in a firm. The role of a team is highlighted as well in the literature review. We felt that the main point of this post was to deepen our understanding of the topic on a more theoretical level. 

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References: 

 

Chuang, C., Jackson, S. A. & Jiang, Y. (2019). Can Knowledge-Intensive Teamwork Be Managed? Examining the Roles of HRM Systems, Leadership, and Tacit Knowledge. Journal of Management Vol. 42 No. 2, February 2016 524–554. 

 

Chung, Y. & Jackson, S. E. (2013). The internal and external networks of knowledge-intensive teams: The role of task routineness. Journal of Management, 39: 442-468.

 

Conger, J. A. & Kanungo, R. N. (1988). The empowerment process: Integrating theory and practice. Academy of Management Review, 3: 471–482.

 

Grant, R. M. (1996). Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 17: 109–122.

 

Jackson, S. E., Chuang, C. H., Harden, E. E. & Jiang, Y. (2006). Toward developing human resource management systems for knowledge-intensive teamwork. In J. Martocchio (Ed.), Research in personnel and human resources management, vol. 25: 27–70. Oxford, UK: Elsevier.

 

Locke, A. E., Alavi, M. & Wagner, J. (1997). Participation in decision making: An information exchange perspective. In g. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in personnel and human resources management, vol. 15: 293–331.