Purpose -This study aims to discuss how organizational researchers use the concept of tacit knowledge. The concept has become a ''buzzword'' in the last decade and has given rise to an extensive literature. The current study views tacit knowledge as a crucial concept that may help link individual understanding and skills and organizational routines and capabilities, a rare topic of discussion in extant literature.Design/methodology/approach -The paper also addresses some of the misunderstandings in the theoretical and empirical organizational literature on tacit knowledge. Organizational researchers usually refer to Michael Polanyi's conception of the term as tacit knowledge, though they mean Gilbert Ryle's concept of ''knowing-how'' instead.Findings -Accordingly, the primordial nature of tacit knowing is lost in the transition and what is left is a linear dichotomy of tacit and explicit knowledge.Originality/value -This misunderstanding creates an obstacle in the way toward establishing the link between individual skills and organizational routines and capabilities. The paper ends with suggestions offered toward bringing the individual and the organization under the same theoretical explanation of human action.

This study investigates the association between types of trust and inter-firm learning in buyer–supplier exchanges in an industrial cluster. More specifically, the study explores the impact of trust types on knowledge sharing among manufacturer and retailer SMEs in a furniture cluster. The results of empirical data from 158 manufacturers suggest no significant association between trust based on competence, reliability and predictability and inter-firm learning and a significant positive association between trust based on goodwill, benevolence and non-opportunism and inter-firm learning. The study findings integrate research on the relational and knowledge-related aspects of knowledge exchange at the dyadic inter-firm level.Goodwill trust, competence trust, inter-firm learning, clusters, furniture industry, buyer–supplier exchanges, Turkey,

This study investigates the interaction between trust, social control, output control, and perceived performance (measured as the buyer's satisfaction) for the relationship of pharmacies with their primary drug wholesalers, where both parties are SMEs.A model generated by qualitative analysis is tested with survey data from 360 Turkish pharmacies.The results suggest a positive association between trust and social control and a negative association between trust and output control, in addition to a substitutive relationship between trust and output control regarding perceived performance.A positive association is found between social control and perceived performance, but output control seems to have no effect on the latter. Finally, output control and social control are negatively associated with each other and have a substitutive relationship while predicting perceived performance. While focusing on small businesses in a service industry, the study contributes to the general debates on the interrelationships of trust, control, and partnership performance.

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