STRATEGY, KNOWLEDGE, APPROPRIATION, AND ETHICS IN HRM 259other organizational members for the good of the organization? The nature of
tacit knowledge lends itself to a certain degree of ambiguity in this respect.
Tacit knowledge is said to have a ‘personal nature’ (Polanyi 1967), is manifest
in action, and has a distributed character (Blackler 1995; Tsoukas 1996). Tacit
knowledge is difficult to formalize and communicate, thus rendering it sticky
(von Hippel 1994). We can apply this notion more generally to work itself.
In developing their notion of work as disputed terrain, Kruger, Kruse, and
Caprile (2002: 203) argue that:
the capacity to work (and therefore the work actually performed by individuals) is
not divisible, because work is an important constituent of personal identity and the
individual’s participation in life in its widest sense.
This characterization of work has important implications for the management
of knowledge vis-à-vis industrial and labour relations. For example, when
management undertake work re-organization and other forms of organiza-
tional change, the impact is not only felt in operational workplace outcomes
but also in the changes to the forms and degrees of control workers have over
the work process and hence over the knowledge creation process, or work
process knowledge. Individuals therefore emerge as agents with a capacity to
shape the work flow process andipso facto, a capacity to impact on knowledge
diffusion. The polarities, real or potential, between the individual and the
organization as regards the execution of work and knowledge diffusion are
made more complex by the fact that work is attached to personal identity,
and the choices are not as clear-cut as merely spelling out the individuals’
respective duties and obligations. The appropriation regime thus goes beyond
structure and hierarchy, and embraces questions like motivation and commit-
ment (Kirkpatrick and Ackroyd 2003).
Individual motivation has an important role in determining the extent to
which an individual is prepared to contribute effort and knowledge towards
organizational objectives. Therefore, managers need to appreciate what indi-
viduals want and how the perceptions about the way they are treated affect
their choices, in particular how they position themselves in the appropriation
regime. Efforts to explain motivation range from transaction cost economics
with its emphasis on opportunism and self-interest and the need for institu-
tional mechanisms (Williamson 1985) to the concern with more intrinsic and
behavioural perspectives which introduce notions like psychological contracts
and identification with the firm (Rousseau 1995). Furthermore, withholding
tacit knowledge is likely to involve the more complex issue of shirking and free
riding (Kandel and Lazear 1992). In this case, Osterloh and Frey (2000: 545)
argue that employees cannot be identified and sanctioned if they hold back
their tacit knowledge, and therefore, ‘an intrinsic motivation to generate and
transfer tacit knowledge cannot be compelled but can only be enabled under
suitable conditions. By its nature, intrinsic motivation is always voluntary’.