The present state of knowledge sharing in knowledge intensive business service

Knowledge management (KM) has become one of the cornerstones in recent management literature. It is known to positively effect firm performance and innovation. Global market environment has created a new interest in knowledge as a resource especially in internal processes of an organization. Studies have concluded knowledge sharing to be the most important process of knowledge management. This supports the selection of knowledge sharing as the KM process to study. The target of the study is a single case organization. The study is motivated by the strategy change inside the case organization which included enhancement of knowledge sharing tools and practices. The theory framework consists of widely used KM concept: knowledge types explained with the DIKW-hierarchy and knowledge dimensions with the SECI-model. KM in both small and medium sized firms (SMEs) and KIBS are included in theory. The present state of knowledge sharing is studied in four different levels: individual, technological, organizational and other. The categories are based on Riege’s framework on knowledge sharing barriers with an added other level. The other level included barriers which could not be categorized in the three earlier levels. Both positive and negative aspects called enablers and barriers of knowledge sharing are included in the study. The study is conducted with a mixed strategy involving two strategies: a single case research and action research. A multimethod sequential analysis is used in the primary data gathered with interview and survey. Interviews from management team and a survey to middle management are analysed to present the state of knowledge sharing. The study includes also the past state analysing to compare how the organizational strategy change has affected the knowledge sharing. It was concluded that it affected positively but there were still problems carried from past state to present state. The main problem carried was creating well-established organizational changes. It is suggested to create better practices for change to overcome this problem. The findings are aligned with the relevant literature about KM. The KM strategy concluded is the personalization strategy with some practices from codification. As the personalization strategy featured more tacit knowledge, the sharing problems were found out to be linked to explicit knowledge sharing. Especially the SECI-model process of combination was found to be problematic. The present state enablers and barriers were identified from the present state. Six enablers were found with three of them in organizational and one in every other category. Technological tools were concluded to be the biggest sole enabler in the case organization. There were seventeen barriers which of five were identified as major barriers and twelve as minor. The two biggest barriers were lack of time and organizational culture for knowledge sharing. The sequential analysis method provided validity for the findings with triangulation. The findings were also aligned with recent literature about KM in SMEs and KIBS. In conclusion it is suggested that managers of SMEs and KIBS pay more attention to KM and create a systematic strategy as early as possible. The KM strategy should include a responsible that supervises its effectiveness