The Role of Knowledge Acquisition in a Company – Research Results from German and Polish Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

This article elaborates the authors' method for tacit knowledge acquisition focused on a research and development department in a manufacturing company. It presents a case study of the use of concepts for tacit knowledge acquisition and is based on a survey and data obtained from 85 Polish and German Manufacturing Companies from the cross-border cooperation region of Lubuskie/PolandBrandenburg/Germany. This article develops a framework of tacit knowledge acquisition in a manufacturing company and further discusses the research results.Keywords: tacit knowledge, knowledge acquisition, research and development department, manufacturing company. IntroductionFor manufacturing companies functioning in the knowledge-based economy, their knowledge is now known as a key source for their development (Nycz, 2011). Moreover, knowledge is also the main source for any action in innovative enterprises and can increase the market value of a company (Drucker, 1964). The implementation of new tasks in a company is frequently based on interdisciplinary knowledge that is rooted in the minds of different specialists. According to Wąsowicz (2013), knowledge should be accumulated to create a possibility of the exchange of experience gained from working on projects within a company. Knowledge is defined as consisting of tacit knowledge (acquired from employees) and explicit knowledge (defined in the form of company policies, regulations, procedures, policies, etc.). In this paper, special attention is paid to tacit knowledge acquisition. Additionally, knowledge in a company can be obtained from internal sources of the company as well as from external sources (Prodan, CoticSvetina, 2008; PatalasMaliszewska and Krebs, 2015). Our motivation to study this approach came from the research results obtained from Polish and German manufacturing companies 1 .1 This work was supported in part by the project realized by Justyna Patalas-Maliszewska: "Assessing the relationship be-A manufacturing company needs to develop methods to acquire knowledge, especially tacit knowledge. According to Maurer (2010), knowledge acquisition can increase the success of research and development (R&D) projects. This study focuses on the relationships between tacit knowledge acquisitions from identified tacit knowledge sources with factors describing any realized R&D project success. The quest to describe relationships, especially how they lead to an increase of R&D projects in manufacturing companies, was motivated by the authors' research to build a model and method for tacit knowledge acquisition for R&D departments in manufacturing companies.Using survey data from 62 Polish manufacturing companies from the Lubuskie region and from 23 German manufacturing companies from the Brandenburg region, this study discusses the main tacit knowledge sources in a manufacturing company and how they affect project realization in the crossborder cooperative region of Lubuskie/PolandBrandenburg/Germany. The research companies are from the automotive and construction se...

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