Organizing the Organization : Recommendation of development for explicit and tacit knowledge sharing at a University Library in North America

Sammanfattning: This report works with a case provided in the course IS/IT for Organizing, Communication and Coordination II at Linnaeus University, Sweden. The case involves a University in North America that is renovating and revamping and, in essence, reinventing its library along with the services offered by the library and the facilities within. Along with the university staff in charge of the library renovations, the group analysed the possible gaps in the current working ecosystem and discussed how they can be improved upon. It was found out and understood that there is a lack of cohesion in the way the library staff generate, store and share documents and resources, which was intertwined with the lack of team culture and sense of professional community. Useful information was said to be in silos in the form of staff members that were somewhat disconnected from each other. This information was often in the form of explicit knowledge that was not easily accessible and tacit knowledge that was, in a sense, locked away since it was involuntarily not being shared. The group preparing this report used the theoretical background of knowledge management and knowledge sharing, along with a Soft Systems Methodology approach, to provide recommendations that the professionals in charge of the library renovations could execute upon during their plans. The recommendations revolve around organizing the organizational knowledge and bringing more cohesiveness to the way the staff and systems generate, store and share this knowledge, leading the way towards a knowledge-friendly culture. The proposed solutions elaborated by the group take Nonaka’s two types of knowledge (1994) into consideration: explicit and tacit knowledge. The recommendations begin with organizing the knowledge with aims of easier retrieval by users, using Shared Folder platforms or Content Management Systems. The active creation and sharing of knowledge shall be supported using blogs, wikis and e-learning authoring systems. Sharing of tacit knowledge can be enhanced by a Yellow Pages of the library staff, Community of Practice and through mentoring and networking activities.