Tacit Knowledge Spreading Based on Knowledge Spreading Model on Networks with Consideration of Intention Mechanism
Hong-Miao ZHU, Sheng-Tai ZHANG, Yong-Yun ZHANG, Feifei WANG, Kenzhong-LIU
Journal of Digital Information Management, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2015.
DOI: 
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Abstract:
At present, knowledge management (KM)
is critical to the success of a firm in digital information
era. KM effectiveness and competitive advantages of a
firm can be increased and sustained by effectively
encouraging employees to propagate useful tacit
knowledge across the organization. Tacit knowledge
propagates through direct contact among individuals in
an organization. Therefore, we consider employees and
their contacts as an undirected network, which is also
considered as a knowledge exchange network. We model
the peculiarities of a tacit knowledge spreading in
knowledge network with consideration of intention
mechanism, and this model is compared with Susceptible-
Infected-Susceptible (SIS) model. We provide simulation
and numerical results to support our analyses and results.
Results show that the degree distribution of knowledge
exchange network and intention mechanism have great
influence on tacit knowledge spreading. Our results show
that a threshold that governs whether a tacit knowledge
can spread across the organization exists. Analysis
results can guide KM and digital information management
in view of the theoretical and practical aspects.