Cross level Impacts of Tacit Knowledge on Knowledge intensive Organizations’ Performance

Abstract:

From both individual and organizational levels, a cross level model was proposed with a focus on the impacts of tacit knowledge on knowledge intensive organization’s performance. A questionnaire survey and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), by using hospital as the typical case of knowledge intensive organization, were adopted to carry out the empirical test. The research findings are as follows: the individual and organizational tacit knowledge have positive impacts on the corresponding performance; the knowledge sharing plays a partial mediator role between organization tacit knowledge and organization performance, while positively moderates the relationship of individual tacit knowledge and performance from a hierarchical angle; and the average level of individual performance has a significant positive effect on organizational performance. Furthermore, several suggestions on improving organizations’ performance were concluded from the prospects of deeply mining tacit knowledge, promoting tacit knowledge’s sharing and enhancing an organization’s synthesized behavior.