An Empirical Study On Factors To Knowledge Workers’ Tacit Knowledge

In an era of knowledge economics, not only knowledge workers but also their possessed personal knowledge has been recognized as important resources of an organization’s competitive advantage. Due to knowledge workers’ attributes in their job content, working style, etc., it is theoretically and practically valuable to dig into their knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation. There is a growing consensus that tacit knowledge is playing a more important role than explicit knowledge in these workers’ knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation, which has attracted much attention but still needs deeper exploration. Based on this judgment, this study aims at addressing the following three research questions:What comprises the tacit knowledge of knowledge workers? What factors influence knowledge workers’ tacit knowledge and its acquisition? What is their relative impact of these factors?Based on a comprehensive literature review, this study argues that both personal and contextual variables have impact on knowledge workers’ tacit knowledge. For tacit knowledge, there are several components or types, which can generally be classified into declarative tacit knowledge and procedural tacit knowledge. Possibly, there are four personal variables, namely sensed importance, attention, motivation and working orientation. Also, there are nine contextual variables, namely organizational structure, organizational goals, mutual trust, power, reward system, valued knowledge types, knowledge orientation, types of training and spatial arrangement.The methodology of this study is basically empirical. A theoretical model, hypotheses, and related items are proposed based on literature review. The questionnaire is fixed after an expert review and a small-size test sampling. Using snowball sampling, this study collected a sample of 459,454 of which are considered as valid sample in analysis. These samples consist of knowledge workers mainly from industries such as IT, architectural design, medical, education and training, finance, etc. Reliability and validity test show that the data is applicable to factor analysis and regression analysis.Factor analysis supports that knowledge workers’ tacit knowledge can be classified into declarative and procedural tacit knowledge. For personal attributes, there are 3 common factors, which represent personal attitudes toward tacit knowledge, working orientation and personal motivations respectively. For contextual variables, there are 4 common factors, which represent organizational characteristics, knowledge management style, spatial arrangement and valued knowledge types.Multiple regression analysis shows that personal attribute variables and contextual variables ideally account for knowledge workers’ tacit knowledge. More detailed analysis shows that these variables are more vibrant in explaining knowledge workers’declarative tacit knowledge, while relatively weak in explaining their procedural tacit knowledge. Specifically, results also provide evidence that compared to contextual variables and factors, personal attribute variables and factors play a relatively more important role in explaining knowledge workers’ tacit knowledge, while contextual variables and factors have limited influence on their tacit knowledge, especially on their procedural tacit knowledge. The results also draw attention to type and size of organizations, which calls for close exploration to mediate variable(s) of micro-level context.This study explores both personal and contextual factors to knowledge workers’ tacit knowledge, and empirically tests and explains their relative impact. It suggests that future studies should focus on four directions:to deepen the theoretical framework of the concept TACIT KNOWLEDGE, to focus on a more micro-level social interaction process and outcomes between knowledge workers, to pay attention to external environment factors, and to adopt qualitative research methods to cross validate the theoretical model.