Model of Knowledge Transfer Within an Organisation

Abstract

Many studies show that the acquisition of knowledge is the key to build competitive advantage of companies. We propose a simple model of knowledge transfer within the organization and we implement the proposed model using cellular automata technique. In this paper the organisation is considered in the context of complex systems. In this perspective, the main role in organisation is played by the network of informal contacts and the distributed leadership. The goal of this paper is to check which factors influence the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge transfer. Our studies indicate a significant role of initial concentration of chunks of knowledge for knowledge transfer process, and the results suggest taking action in the organisation to shorten the distance (social distance) between people with different levels of knowledge, or working out incentives to share knowledge.

Influence of a Range of Interaction among Agents on Efficiency and Effectiveness of Knowledge Transfer within an Organisation

“…The figures 3(d, e, f) and 3(j, k, l) present top 10% of figures 3(a, b, c) and 3(g, h, i), respectively. For von Neumann neighbourhood and medium (L = 10) and larger organisations we observe minimum of n(K) curves for p ≈ 0.6 [13]. This counter-intuitive effect is directly associated with restriction (1b)-for high enough initial concentration of chunks of knowledge p some agents acquire high level of competences quite quickly and do not want share their knowledge with their not-so-smart neighbours.…”

“…As we can see, the shape of neighbourhood does not influence the time evolution of n(k) too much. The system is much more vulnerable to the changes of initial concentration of chunks of knowledge p [13]. However-particularly for larger K and larger p-we can see that fraction of n(k = K) grows slightly with the number M of sites constituting the neighbourhood.…”

“…Similarly to our earlier approaches [13,14] every agent is characterised by a Boolean vector variable…”

“…The results presented here base on model of knowledge transfer within a small or a medium organisation [13] where agents send and recipe chunks of knowledge only when distances i ) in space among agents ii ) and in knowledge are small. Removing the latter restriction leads to more efficient and more effective knowledge transfer [14].…”

“…Here we would like to check if omitting the spatial restriction also may be helpful in spreading knowledge among agents in artificial organisation. Similarly to our earlier approaches [13,14] we will predicate our discussion of the results on the computer simulations based on cellular automata (CA) technique.…”