First up – the easily relatable Connelly, Zweig, Webster and Trougakos’s Knowledge Hiding in Organizations. I found the title to be a little nefarious – why else would one hide knowledge but to keep it for oneself or submarine a colleague or the overall organization. Connelly et al (2012) makes it clear that while knowledge hiding is “an intentional concealment of knowledge requested by another”, the behavior studied does not include “cases where an employee fails to share knowledge by mistake, accident, or ignorance” and is not “necessarily discourteous, nor enacted with intent to harm” (p. 66-67). Knowledge transfer, according to the authors, is highly sought by organizations. The behavior of knowledge hiding, of course, interferes with the process of knowledge transfer between persons. The point of the paper is to identify how knowledge hiding occurs. If organizations can recognize potential knowledge hiding patterns, then organizations can change themselves for the better to facilitate knowledge transfer. An example of this would be to promote a shared identity amongst group members so they will be uncomfortable holding back information (p. 84).
Knowledge hiding is broken down into three categories (p.76) – playing dumb; pretending you don’t know the answer to a question, evasive hiding; giving only a part of the information while saying you get to the rest later, knowing you won’t, and rationalized hiding; making an excuse to not give the information. For myself I can answer that I do engage with rationalized hiding. I know I can get things done faster rather than having to tell someone a step by step process. Even when teaching someone, I may give just the basics because it is easier to keep the teaching flow going and I can get the training done sooner. If the person who I am training is a friend I am much more likely to share anecdotes about how I messed up in the process to share a laugh. But with someone I am uncomfortable with, who I view as maybe judgy, I have said “this is what to do, I’ll be over here if you need any help”.
The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks by H. M. Collins (1974) offers the argument that science is a “craft activity” (p. 183) dependent on the diffusion of tacit knowledge through a social network. Collins thinks knowledge flows better through experiences – i.e. asking questions, looking at laser setups and visiting labs open for viewing rather than relying on explicit knowledge, i.e. diagrams, blue prints, articles. Collins states “the major point is that transmission of skills is not done through the medium of the written word” (p. 177).
For the article, Collins tracks labs interested in build a TEA laser. It’s not important to the article what the scientists where doing but how information travels. In the first example given of tacit versus explicit, Collins uses lab gossip (tacit information) to find who else is working on the laser – finding 7 – just by asking “who else is working on this?” (p.172). When using official channels, such as questionnaires, search of research applications, search of literature citing the original idea, not all 7 labs were found. The gossip method (or snowball method as Collins says) was more efficient and found better information.
The second example of the flow of tacit knowledge relates to the building of the lasers themselves. Various labs would use two different techniques to control the output of the laser. Within those two techniques, there were some customization based on the labs (p.175). Collins explains that other than the first lab (Origin), the other labs learned to make the lasers though contact with another “source” laboratory though phone calls, visits, and scientists moving between labs for employment (p.177). The laser couldn’t be built just by following a diagram or blueprint, but that each lab though various exchanges and experiences personalized how they got their laser to work. These exchanges/experiences diffused tacit knowledge from one scientist to another, from one lab to another, to shape the laser building process.
2 additional thoughts:
* Page 180-181 runs through a range of reasons corroborating why Connelly’s hiding knowledge behavior happens. Labs seem to want to cut back the flow of information when it becomes a hardship on the lab’s own work to take time out and show others. The labs don’t want to be outdone by others so they may restrict parts of information or they may answer somewhat but not explain all their tacit knowledge due to worry about competition for resources and prestige.
* Page 181-182 lists the underlying social relationships found within the scientist group. The scientists may have worked at the same lab in the past or may have authored a paper together. One relationship was based on the involvement in a wedding party. The members showed a certain amount of social capital and trust that strangers would not normally have. This social network formed a backbone of scientist willing to share knowledge. If the group was less known to each other, the diffusion of knowledge to build the lasers would probably be limited if happening at all. See Christy’s blog about relationships and knowledge for a better clarified view of this intersection.
Knowledge transfer in response to organizational crises: An exploratory study by Wang and Lu details how knowledge effectively flows as the authors studied the Archer Motor Taiwan Corporation as it went through a business crisis – the recall of a popular model of moped due to a defect. Wang and Lu corroborate Collins view of knowledge as a craft activity – “what needs to be known and who needs to know it” – and how it can be better transferred thorough the experts speaking with one another (p. 3934). The authors view this expert giving knowledge to expert as the most effective transfer of knowledge, but in a crisis this solution is not always available.
The authors detailed 4 other channels – communities of practice, job rotation (cross-training), documentation, and mentoring systems (learning from an expert also involved in craft activity) (p. 3937) – that contributed to the transfer of knowledge and solving the company’s problem. Table 3 on page 3941 sums up the findings. The company’s encouragement of mentoring – placing a new employee with an older established employee who then taught the new employee their job duties – created employees who were sure of what to do for their jobs. This has an effect of quelling anxiety and uncertainty if an employee knows their job intimately. The same can be said of job transfer or cross training employees. By giving employees a base to see other aspects of the company, the organization increases the potential knowledge base of any employee leading to potential ideas for solving the crisis. The communities of practice served as groups where employees could exchange ideas on fixing the crisis. The Documentation channel was tracked through the company’s e-mail and discussion boards that transferred knowledge outside of departmental boundaries. All 4 channels served as efficient ways to share knowledge to solve the problem.
References:
Collins, H. M. (1974). The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks. Science Studies, 4(2), 165-185. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/284473
Connelly, C. E., Zweig, D., Webster, J., & Trougakos, J. P. (2012). Knowledge hiding on organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(1), 64-88. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.737
Wang, W. T. & Lu, Y. C. (2010). Knowledge transfer in response to organizational crises: An exploratory study. Expert Systems with Applications, 37(5), 3934-3942. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2009.11.023
Adventures in Knowledge Management 
Amber, I really like how you compared the Knowledge Hiding article with the TEA set article. I read both of them (at different times) and still didn’t really put them together like you did! Really interesting take on the situation.
Also, I find myself often training people on datasets and tools. I have to really stop myself from just saying, “Try it, you’ll like it and getting the hang of it is easy and fast; I’ll be right over here if you need anything” and just really digging in and training them. While I don’t expect anything in return per se, I have found that building my community of practice allows me to direct new requests for information or help to someone who is now a (mostly) fully fledged member of the CoP. And thus I get credit for helping the second person, the first person is seen as an expert (-ish), and the CoP sometimes gets a third person.
But boy, the investment! Sheesh!
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Yes, Matthew – it wasn’t until I read the article that I was aware that I was engaging in that behavior. And like the article said I didn’t hide knowledge to be mean, weighing the return on my investment it was easier to train people quickly without engaging in chit chat. But I feel like we’ve learned through this class that “chit chat” is often a main tool for passing on important tacit knowledge.
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I have also found myself in many situations where instead of actually training someone I have just laid out the basics and walked off to do my own thing with a confident thumbs up. I think part of the reason I have done this is because I enjoy figuring things out for myself. I like taking my time and plucking through new things, but there are plenty of people who do not enjoy learning things this way (and plenty of situations where there just isn’t the time to slowly muddle through). It is also important to remember that sometimes you need to walk someone through a few examples to ensure any questions they may have get asked (or at least come up so they have the chance to ask) before you walk away. I’ve had this happen on both sides – the trainer and the trainee – where I will think I know what I am doing based on the few examples my supervisor worked with me on only to realize later that all the examples were apples and I was working on the whole produce section.
Also, I think Alexander makes a great point that properly training someone the first time will limit interruptions and mistakes later on. Much better to do it right the first time and take what time is needed up front.
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Despite the investment involved, I think there’s a lot of merit to putting in the extra effort to provide hands-on training for new people. The more effort I put in to the training process early on, the less my own work hours are interrupted by bombardments of simple (to me) questions later on. So while I don’t expect anything explicit in return, there is the expectation of increased independence on the part of the trainee.
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I’ve been debating my last article to read and I’m glad I stopped in and read your post. The Connelly et al. piece seems super interesting and goes with the two I’ve already read for my last post. I read Kumar & Chakrabarti’s piece on bounded awareness and Ibrahim et al.’s piece on action theory in information sharing that focuses on counterintuitive relationships between trust and information sharing. So they all seem to be related to sharing information in close-nit encounters. This piece talks about knowledge hiding that should be shared and the other two, while they don’t explicitly say “knowledge hiding” talk about how knowledge can be missed or not appropriately shared in crises. These articles seem to enlighten us on ways knowledge might not get shared other than basic communication or network issues.
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I also like putting these articles together, especially knowledge hiding and the TEA set articles. As much as science tries to bill itself as open access and non-competitive, there is still quite a bit of knowledge hiding that goes on. I’ve worked on a few different research projects, and come across these aspects of knowledge hiding in each of them. It’s natural, especially in a competitive society, to want to keep knowledge to yourself, especially if you don’t have a great working relationship with those people. My question to you would be how do we solve this? I think the authors and others who have commented on this post have laid out some suggestions, but how realistic do you think they are?
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I’m thinking of the Katrina article some of us have read this semester. After the crisis and people dying in Katrina, emergency response to Rita was much more collaborative and integrated. Sharing information worked because the situation was high stakes and people put aside ego and competition. But luckily these extreme cases are rare. So while companies/organizations offer rewards for sharing information, unless the reward out weighs the potential loss of advantage, people won’t easily share. Rita – they wanted to save lives; library director wants to shift duties and personnel – the director probably won’t share that information until they are quite sure of their plan in order to avoid complaints and employee panic. The consequence to sharing has to be less than the consequence to not sharing.
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I liked your review of Connelly et al’s work on what happens in an organization when knowledge transfer fails. This idea that employees may not be willing to share knowledge even when the organization has taken steps to facilitate the sharing and transfer is interesting. Individuals in an organization evasively hiding their knowledge or playing dumb when knowledge is requested of them is baffling. Everyone seems to have their own reasoning or rationale for why they chose to withhold knowledge or refuse to participate in the knowledge transfer process, but I really felt that it was clear to me that ‘distrust’ seemed to be the common denominator. What do you think?
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I totally agree Tim. You either distrust whether your knowledge will be taken somehow and you will lose out in some advantage or you distrust the context of the situation – “I don’t have time to meet my goals and answer your questions cause I don’t think you can understand what I’m telling you quick enough for me”. Probably the most ethical reason to hide knowledge would be if the organization was restricting knowledge to maintain competition or upper management hadn’t really figured out how they were going to do something and didn’t want to cause panic. But in both cases the powers that be didn’t trust the people who didn’t have the information because they though they would blab or panic.
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I enjoyed reading your posts. This is the first one I have ready from your page and the flow of content is easily read. I found myself chuckling inside from you being that person ““this is what to do, I’ll be over here if you need any help” that I have encountered so many times. Sometimes that person is welcomed and sometimes they are perceived as grumpy and not to be used even if the are “over here”. I would say the difference is in the tacit knowledge of the subject that is held by the person being trained. If I have a solid foundational knowledge of the task then I prefer to be left alone to get it accomplished. On the other hand if I do not know the details I expect to get the deets. The challenge comes in for the person within the organization analyzing if they are in fact hiding knowledge or promoting an environment where explicit knowledge is shared so that tacit experiences can be developed.
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Personally, I would agree with Collins that knowledge flows better through experience. I know I tend to pick things up faster if I can try it out or at least watch it so I can ask questions. It was interesting to learn that people were much more willing to give out information in person than they would a questionnaire.
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I think that’s a question of being social. I think it’s easier to spin out a story if you have a listening audience. Stories are also easier to tell rather than take the time to write them out.
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