Understanding Knowledge Creation, Transfer, and Application: Investigating Cooperative, Autonomous Systems Development Teams

Knowledge management has begun to play a key role in organizations and research activities alike. Knowledge can be classified as tacit (i.e., "knowing-how") and explicit (i.e., "knowing-what"). A gap exists in knowledge management research in that research has been dominated by an information technology perspective and tends to focus on explicit knowledge. This study seeks to address this gap by focusing on tacit knowledge management using tenets from cooperative learning theory. The research proposes that the sharing of tacit knowledge is made up of related sub-activities, and seeks more clarity in understanding autonomy, an antecedent that drives these activities. Furthermore, the research attempts to uncover the relationships between the tacit knowledge sharing sub-activities and the work outcomes produced by the knowledge work.