Factors Affecting Tacit Knowledge Sharing

Social interaction is an important factor in the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge. Several factors are thought to affect social interaction, and therefore acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge, development of transactive memory and subsequent team performance. Two main factors influence the amount and quality of social interaction. The first is team climate, that encourages interaction. In the present study this team climate is adjudged to be psychological safety. The second is structural aspects of the team, which also influences social interaction, namely, team size, proximity and diversity. Each of these factors will be described, and some initial studies providing empirical evidence for the relationships among them will be outlined. More specific studies related to software development teams are detailed in Chapter 5.

4.5.1 Psychological Safety

Team psychological safety is defined by Edmondson (1999) as:

a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. For the most part, this belief tends to be tacit - taken for granted and not given direct attention either by individuals or by the team as a whole. Although tacit beliefs about interpersonal norms are sometimes explicitly discussed in a team, their being made explicit does not alter the essence of team psychological safety (p. 354).

relationship between psychological safety and well-designed teams, Edmondson (1999), developed and tested, a new seven-item survey measure of team psychological safety. Analysis of the individual-level survey data (n=427) demonstrated the convergence of team members’ perceptions of psychological safety. Edmondson (1999) concluded that, in groups with high psychological safety, group members are confident that the group would not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking out or for bringing a different perspective to the task.

4.5.2 Empirical Studies of Social Interaction, Team Performance and Psychological Safety

Gorla and Lam (2004) investigated social interaction, as measured by the degree of extroversion on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and team performance in 20, Hong Kong development teams, consisting of 92 IS professionals. These researchers found that social interaction was strongly related to team performance, teams with extroverted programmers outperformed those with introverted types. The authors explain that this may be because programmers in small organisations must take on several roles and interact with many people.

Mu and Gnyawali (2003) in a study of 132 senior business students in the US, in groups o f 4-6 people, investigated social interaction, task conflict, psychological safety as predictors of Synergistic Knowledge Development (SKD) and subsequent perceptions o f group performance. SKD is a ‘process by which a group constructively integrates diverse perspectives of individual group members’ (p.690). Students analysed a case study individually at first, and then in groups. This process took place over several weeks, to allow the development of a collective understanding. Social interaction was measured using two-item, self-report, seven-point Likert scale. Mu and Gnyawali (2003) found that team psychological safety had the most influence on SKD, followed by task conflict and social interaction had the least influence on SKD. In addition, these authors found that SKD significantly contributes to students’ perception of group performance. SKD is a similar construct to transactive memory. On the basis of this, the following predictions are made:

Hypothesis 12

There will be a positive relationship between social interaction (quality and quantity) and psychological safety.

Hypothesis 13

Transactive memory will be positively related to psychological safety.

Hypothesis 14

The relationship between social interaction (quality and quantity) and transactive memory will be mediated by psychological safety.

4.5.3 Team Structural Factors affecting Social Interaction

4.5.3.1 Social interaction and Team Size

Hare (1981) reviewed existing research on team size conducted since 1898. One consistent theme is that larger teams are marked by less average participation by individual members (Hare, 1981). In a study by Solomon (1960) participation rates in 3- person groups and 10-person groups were compared. Solomon concluded that the least active member in a 3-person group was over twice as active as the least active member in a 10-person group. According to the group dynamics literature, increasing the size of a group introduces opposing forces that affect group performance differently (Shaw, 1981). On the one hand, a larger group has greater cognitive resources at its disposal, resources that may contribute to improved group knowledge, creativity, and performance (Haleblian & Finkelstein, 1993). On the other hand, the larger group may suffer from problems related to control and coordination, with the net result that performance declines. This dynamic tension is also noted in the organization theory literature, in the observation that organizations become more control-oriented as they grow (Mintzberg, 1979).

A general rule when researching team size, is that a larger team adversely affects communication and coordination (e.g. Bantel, 1994; Wiersema & Bantel, 1992; Zenger & Lawrence, 1989) Rentsch and Klimoski (2001) investigated possible antecedents including team size, of team member schema agreement in 41 work teams. Teams ranged in size from 2-27 people and it was found that team size was negatively associated with schema agreement. These authors reasoned that team size and schema agreement may be mediated by team member interaction, in that size dictates interaction opportunity. Finally, Wagner, et al. (1984) argued that the communication processes in large groups are more structured and constrained than in small groups.

Social interaction (quality and quantity) will vary according to team size, where the smaller the team the better the quality of the interaction and the greater the quantity of interaction.

4.5.3.2 Social interaction and Diversity

Diversity in this study refers to cross-functional groups which consist of members from different functional areas or different functional backgrounds. Professional or job diversity is the area of interest, rather than demographic or individual differences. A consistent finding in the cross-functional literature is that, although diverse groups can have positive outcomes, e.g. produce better-quality products more quickly and at lower cost (Lutz, 1994), their members also tend to have lower group cohesiveness and job satisfaction and higher turnover and job stressors than do members of homogeneous groups (Harrison et al. 1998; Jackson, et al. 1991; Lau & Mumighan, 1998; Milliken & Martins, 1996). Reduced communication among group members, moreover, can be harmful to internal social relationships and group cohesiveness (Harrison et al., 1998; Tsui et al., 1995). The following is therefore predicted:

Hypothesis 16

There will be a negative relationship between social interaction (quality and quantity) and diversity.

4.5.3.3 Social interaction and Proximity

According to Cramton (2001) people react more strongly to people they come into physical contact with which enhances group cohesion and leads to the building of better relationships over time. Distant people communicate less frequently, leading to less diffusion of task information (ibid). Proximity may be seen in the distance between people in a team.

The further away people are, who have to communicate, the less they will talk to each other. A distance of 30 metres is considered truly remote (Allen, 1977). This reduction in communication will have a negative relationship to the development of shared mental models (Levesque et al. 2000), in particular transactive memory. Others such as Kraut et al. (1990) have also shown that distance affects communication between team members.

In a field study in the US, conducted at a leading Fortune 100 company, they examined how having development teams reside in their own large room (an arrangement called radical collocation), affected system development. The collocated teams had significantly higher productivity and shorter schedules than both the industry benchmarks and the performance of past similar projects within the firm. The teams reported high satisfaction about their process, and both customers and project sponsors were similarly highly satisfied. The analysis of questionnaire, interview, and observational data from these teams showed that being ‘at hand,’ both visibly and being available, helped them coordinate their work better and learn from each other. Team members coordinate their actions around various artefacts and arrangements of people in space and so is related to distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1991; Suchman, 1987). Sawyer found that team rooms helped focus the activities of the work group and isolated them from interruptions (Sawyer et al. 1997). Therefore, proximity is o f importance in

social interaction. The following hypothesis is forwarded:

Hypothesis 17

Proximity will be positively related to social interaction

4.6

Summary

This chapter explored the issues surrounding the nature of the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge in groups. Tacit knowledge is acquired at the individual level through expertise, through the development of expert knowledge and skill learning, either implicitly or explicitly. The acquisition of tacit knowledge at the individual level may be seen in expert performance. The acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge at the group level involves social interaction and the development of TMMs, specifically transactive memory. Several hypotheses were forwarded predicting the relationships between, tacit knowledge, social interaction and transactive memory. In addition several predictions were made regarding the factors that influences social interaction and thus tacit knowledge acquisition and sharing.

In Chapter 5 the model for the acquisition and sharing o f tacit knowledge in software development teams is described and all hypotheses pertinent to this study listed.

Model for the Acquisition and Sharing of Tacit Knowledge in