Employee’s Tacit Knowledge Dependence and Utilization in Turbulent Environments: A Developing Country Perspective of Improvisation

Abstract

In the age of globalization and knowledge economy, organizations face fierce competition. Organizations use both tangible and intangible resources for competitive advantage. One of those resources is knowledge itself. Knowledge has been divided into two parts namely; explicit and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is known as codified knowledge available in the forms of manuals, formulas, and standard operating procedures. Tacit knowledge is embedded in employee’s observation experiences and practices. The research identified that 90 percent of knowledge used in an organization is tacit knowledge (Wah,1999b; Bonner,2000a; Lee,2000). However, there is a scarcity of research on the contextual factors of tacit knowledge utilization which can benefit organizations and employees in today’s knowledge economy. The purpose of this study is to explore the contextual factors of tacit knowledge utilization in a turbulent environment so that, organizations ensure those factors for the utilization of tacit knowledge, as an asset, for competitive advantage. Moreover, organizations do not always work in a stable environment. They may face different challenges such as infrequent demands from different stakeholders such as suppliers, customers, and governments, etc. (King and Ranft, 2001). Such a situation represents uncertainty where preplanned routines do not work. In such a situation, organizations need to become flexible to coup with the uncertainty. Organizations respond to such evolving and changing situations through improvisation. The ability of the organizations and their employees to deal with complex and uncertain situations creatively and professionally is termed as improvisation. That is why it is important to study the role of tacit knowledge and improvisation in turbulent situations. Therefore, the objectives of the study were: 1) To explore the contextual factor influencing tacit knowledge utilization in a turbulent environment2) To understand the phenomenon of tacit knowledge in leveraging improvisation. Semi-structured interviews and observations are used for data collection. For results and analysis, Thematic analysis has been used by using Atlas.ti software. The results reveal different contextual factors such as individual-level factors, group-level factors, organizational level factors, community-level factors, and situational level factors in rescue organizations which help employees to utilize their tacit knowledge. Such tacit knowledge utilization in turn leads to employee improvisation during an uncertain situation where preexisting routines do not work. The schematic representation of the study is shown in Figure 1.

Fig 1 Schematic representation of thesis.