If Everyone Knew What Everyone Knows, Everyone Would Know More- How Organisational Storytelling Can Be Used to Manage Tacit Knowledge

Abstract: In order to achieve competitive advantage, organisations have to be strategic in their knowledge management. This specifically concerns the management of tacit knowledge, which is known as the intangible type of knowledge. Without an effective strategy for this, organisations stand the risk of losing valuable knowledge and expertise when employees leave the organisation. Research on how to manage tacit knowledge is limited. Therefore, this thesis has investigated the possibility of using organisational storytelling as a tool to manage tacit knowledge. Hence, the purpose with this thesis is to investigate whether organisational storytelling can be used as a strategy to manage tacit knowledge. This has been examined through a case study at SCA Packaging Sweden, which is a rare example of an organisation, which uses storytelling to share knowledge. Qualitative interviews and organisational stories have been analysed in order to investigate how storytelling can be used to create, retain and transfer tacit knowledge. The data collected has also been used to determine if organisational storytelling is effective when managing tacit knowledge.   From our analysis we could conclude that SCA Packaging Sweden’s usage of organisational storytelling creates, retains, and transfers knowledge within the organisation. In addition, our analysis has shown that the stories are rich in tacit knowledge. We can therefore argue that organisational storytelling can be an effective strategy to manage tacit knowledge.