Tacit Knowledge: Some Suggestions for Operationalization

With the emergence of the resource-based view of the firm and of the concept of core competencies, intangible resources, and tacit knowledge in particular have been argued to occupy a central place in the development of sustainable competitive advantage. This is because tacit knowledge is argued to be difficult to imitate, to substitute, to transfer and it is rare. However, there is little empirical research to support this theoretical proposition. Tacit knowledge has so far resisted operationalization. This paper sets out to define the term tacit knowledge and proposes to redefine it, within the context of the resource-based view of the firm, as tacit skills. A methodology (based on causal mapping, self-Q and storytelling) for empirically researching the subject is outlined.     

Using a genetic algorithm-based classifier system for modeling auditor decision behavior in a fraud setting

This paper addresses a classification problem involving the decisions of Defense Contractor Audit Agency (DCAA) auditors when they are estimating the likelihood of fraud by contractors developing bids for government contracts. The objective of the study is to investigate if this decision involves non-algebraic processes associated with a posited simultaneous decision model or algebraic processes posited by sequential decision processes. We propose that in classification decision models involving simultaneous processing, genetic algorithms represent an innovative heuristic approach, which may produce improved models when compared to traditional mathematical approaches. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reforms of work practices and IR procedures in the maritime industry: an Australia-USA comparison

Technological change, enhanced international competition, and a world-wide shipping depression for much of the 1980s posed new challenges for the Australian and US maritime industries. In Australia, maritime workplace reform was carried out by a focus on government-sponsored corporatism and consensus while in the US reform focused on deregulation and collective bargaining. It is unlikely that either pattern will produce fleets that are truly competitive.     

Telecommunications, an instrument of radical change for both the 20th and 21st centuries

This paper compares and contrasts how entrepreneurial disruptions, firm innovations, foreign market expansion and government restraint interact during three distinct periods to create and dramatically expand one service—telecommunications. Because this service has the ability to help business overcome the frictions of time, it has become both an enabling and lead technology in the dramatic economic growth. Telecommunications was instrumental in ushering in the formation of the third Kondratieff long Wave upswing at the beginning of the 20th century and appears to be important in jumpstarting the emerging information economy in the fifth Kondratieff Wave at the end of the 20th century.     

Debugging the system: the impact of dispersion on the identity of software team members

This paper looks at the impact of dispersion of groups of software workers on team and organizational identification. The paper examines at two case studies of software organizations operating in Scotland. One case study is drawn from a software division of a large national telecommunications company, the other from a medium-sized indigenous software firm. Within each organization we examined groups of employees based within and outwith their employing organizations. Our results were broadly consistent with established work within other sectors in finding that the team largely replaced the organization as a focus for identification. However, we also found that there was no difference in the salience of organizational identification between dispersed employees and those based within their employing organization. For many employees the focus on the team as opposed to the organization was a way of reducing subjective uncertainty within a changing corporate environment. Finally, we established that it is team identification rather than organizational identification for software workers that is a greater determinant of affective outcomes such as job satisfaction. The results of this study impact upon contemporary theories of HRM, which promote the design of work systems in order to engender commitment to, and identification with, the organization.