Tacit Knowledge Sharing in Knowledge Intensive Firms: the Perceptions of Team Members and Team Leaders in an Italian Engineering Consulting Firm

The paper aims to investigate individual perceptions about tacit knowledge sharing (TKS) in the context of an Italian project-based Knowledge Intensive Firm (KIF). This research follows a qualitative approach. We analysed a case study with a team work emphasisThe research is based on interviews with company Team Members (TMs) and on surveys through questionnaires submitted to TMs and Team Leaders (TLs) to investigate their perceptions and attitudes regarding TKS. They showed a good TKS intention, in spite of low organizational investment in TKS tools, lack of time to devote to training and low TMs involvement in company's strategic objectives. It also emerged that the TMs perception of the charisma of the leader is rather low.These results suggest a low presence of transformational, charismatic and ethical leadership at the base of the so called knowledge oriented leader. The practical relevance of this study consists in having indications to correct and to improve strategies and methods for managing and disseminating the TKS in KIFs. The paper offers an original contribution in detecting perceptions and actual adoption behaviors of managerial practices and in detecting perceptual gaps between TMs and TLs. The theoretical contribution consists in the analysis of the different perception of TMs and TLs about TKS in KIFs. This is an exploratory survey conducted on a single KIFs. The intent is to extend the analysis on different organizations.