Using storytelling to elicit tacit knowledge from subject matter experts in an organization
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Date
2010
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Abstract
Knowledge Management has been at the heart of mounting focus over the last
several years. Research and literature on the area under discussion has grown and
organizations have come to realize that success is often determined by one’s
ability to create, disseminate, and embody knowledge in products and services.
This realization has led to increased interest in examining the ways in which
knowledge can be effectively identified, elicited, codified, distributed and retained.When an employee leaves an organization, the knowledge they possess often goes with them. This loss can potentially have a negative impact on the productivity and quality of the organization. Knowledge Management seeks to find ways to minimize loss of knowledge when an employee leaves an organization. One of the impediments that knowledge management seeks to overcome is the accepted tendency in people to hoard knowledge. People often withhold knowledge when they feel it provides them with a competitive advantage over others. The argument of this study was intended to provide the organization with an approach that it can utilize to facilitate tacit knowledge elicitation by means of the storytelling method.In keeping with Grounded theory principles, and utilising an interpretive
approach, stories from Subject Matter Experts were collected and re-coded into
fitting knowledge management constructs. The coding of the stories into the various knowledge management constructs was then further refined by means of
expert review. Pearson’s cross correlation analysis was also used as a supporting
tool to determine and validate that the collected stories were classified correctly
under the knowledge management constructs. The research findings eventually
demonstrated that storytelling is an effective means of eliciting tacit knowledge
from experts. In addition to this, the research has inadvertently resulted in the
construction of a knowledge management framework for storytelling.
Description
Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM)
Keywords
Constructs, Correlation, Elicitation, Expert review, Grounded theory, Interpretive, Knowledge, Knowledge management, Knowledge sharing, Organizational memory, Retiring experts, Story, Storytelling, Subject matter expert, Tacit knowledge, Tacit knowledge elicitation