Sharing Practical Knowledge between Individuals within a Multinational Organisation : The Case of a Performance Managament Model

Abstract

Practical knowledge is key to the success of organisations, because if effectively managed and shared, it can lead to sustained competitive advantage. However, sharing practical knowledge remains under-researched. Indeed, although there is increasing interest in understanding practical knowledge and how it is shared, the literature on practical knowledge sharing lacks agreement on: how to represent the sharing process, what stages it involves, and the identification of the focal point of the sharing process. Informed by the literature, the current research aimed to explore how individuals within organisations share practical knowledge, aiming to provide an in-depth representation of the components that constitute the practical knowledge sharing process and providing new insights about what occurs in practice. To achieve this primary objective, further exploration of the role of practical knowledge forms, reflection, situation awareness and the sharing mechanisms within the process of practical knowledge sharing, was required. From the literature review, a conceptual framework of practical knowledge sharing was developed for the purpose of guiding the data collection. Notably, the goal of this work was not to test, verify or validate the developed framework, but to explore how practical knowledge is shared within organisations. Taking this guiding framework into the field, two case studies were conducted within a multinational retail organisation (based in the Middle East), which was argued as a suitable research site. This field work explored how to share the practical knowledge associated with the implementation and application of the practices related to a ‘performance management’ management model. While the unit of analysis for the first case study was those individuals sharing how to ‘set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)’, the unit of analysis for the second case study was those individuals sharing how to ‘rate performance’ of themselves and of their subordinates.