ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Enabling success: organising
Zanvo Consulting finds that its senior engineers hold valuable know-how about client problem-solving that they have never written down and can only convey through working alongside junior staff. Which type of knowledge is this, and what does it imply for how the firm should share it?
This is tacit knowledge, held in people's heads and experience. It is best shared through mentoring, working side by side and communities of practice, because it cannot easily be written down or stored in a database or manual.
- AExplicit knowledge, best shared by storing it in a searchable database
- BTacit knowledge, best shared through mentoring, joint working and communities of practiceCorrect
- CExplicit knowledge, best shared through formal procedure manuals
- DTacit knowledge, best shared by codifying it fully into written policies first
Explanation
Know-how that is not documented and is passed on by working together is tacit knowledge. It is transferred through social interaction such as mentoring and shared projects. Options relying on codification treat it as explicit, which ignores its personal, experience-based nature.
Did you get it right without looking?
One question tells you little. A timed set on Enabling success: organising shows your real accuracy, how long you take and where you lose marks.
More Enabling success: organising questions
- Alder Logistics is delayering, removing a middle management tier so that depot managers report directly to the operations director. Which ou…
- Karlsen Group grew through a directed, centralised functional structure but now has regional managers frustrated that they cannot respond to…
- Zenova Ltd was founded by two engineers three years ago. It has 12 staff, all of whom report directly to the founders, who make nearly every…
- Kestrel Logistics outsources its payroll processing to a supplier under a five-year contract. After two years the supplier's quality falls, …
- Teluk Logistics has a finance director with 14 direct reports, including routine clerks and senior analysts. Errors in reporting have risen …
- Halvorsen Engineering runs a matrix structure in which project engineers report both to a functional head (for example, mechanical design) a…