Kunskapsspridning ur ett medarbetarperspektiv : Sociala faktorer och dess påverkan av den tysta kunskapens spridning vid outsourcing

Sammanfattning: ABSTRACT Title: Knowledge sharing from an employee perspective- Social factors effect on the spread of tacit knowledge at outsourcing Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Evelina Ödling and Ronja Zander Supervisor: Stig Sörling and Thomas Källquist Date: 2016 - January Aim: It has become increasingly common that organizations use external co-workers for temporary tasks and activities, that is, they choose to outsource parts of their operations. This has proven to be important to how the organizations knowledge capital is affected and, consequently, how knowledge is spread between the internal and external co-workers. Tacit knowledge is most affected by outsourcing, and there are social factors that affect co-workers motivation to share their knowledge. The purpose of this study is therefore to illustrate how knowledge is spread between internal and external co-workers with regard to tacit knowledge and social factors. Method: The study was conducted from a qualitative approach and a multiple case study which different types of employment have been studied. Social constructionism has implemented our theory of science and the hermeneutics the knowledge approach we decided to take account with the focus on interpretation and understanding. The empirical collection consists of semi-structured interviews with ten employees when we chose to proceed from an employee perspective. The theoretical framework builds on previous research about our area of interest and has acted as a base of our interview guide. The interview guide has then been used as a template to categorize empirical data and to analyze the empirical outcome. Result & Conclusions: We have according to the social factors in this study noticed that reflexitivity and the socio-psychological factor, focusing on the internal motivation is what affects the spread of the tacit knowledge between internal and external co-workers.Suggestions for future research: When the research on knowledge sharing between different forms of employment are limited, we suggest that further research should focus on studying different project groups or teams to create a deeper qualitative study. Contribution of the thesis: By highlighting the spread of knowledge between internal and external co-workers and converging multiple social factors in the same study, we have provided a theoretical contribution to the current research. The study has also generated a distribution pattern that shows that the internal co-workers spread their knowledge to both internal and external co-workers, while spread from external to internal is weak. This can be classified as the study´s practical contribution and the measures that organizations may need to use so that knowledge are spread between all co-workers. Key words: Outsourcing, knowledge sharing, external/internal co-workers, tacit knowledge, social factors