Trust: A Pathway to Overcome Tacit Knowledge Transfer Barriers

Abstract

Organizations that value tacit knowledge transfer (TKT) have significant advantages over competitors. The knowledge management (KM) community has identified willingness to share and use information as a TKT barrier. Trust has been revealed as key for building effective organization relationships. This study examined stages of trust as a pathway to bridge barriers that affect TKT. It was theorized that, if stages of professional relationship trust existed, then employees would be willing to share and use tacit knowledge. This was the foundation and inspiration for learning methods to measure and improve TKT. This quantitative research used structural equation modeling to investigate the direct effects of calculus-based trust (CBT), knowledge-based trust (KBT) and identity-based trust (IBT) on willingness to share and use tacit knowledge. Each stage was investigated individually. Results indicated that CBT and KBT significantly influenced TKT among employees. Employees in the CBT and KBT stage were more willing to share and use tacit knowledge. The results confirmed that CBT and KBT were pathways that bridged gaps for learning how to overcome TKT barriers.