Effective Tacit Knowledge Transfer: A Leadership Perspective : The Case of the “Toyota Way”

Abstract: Knowledge is viewed today as an organization’s main resource. This regards foremost tacit knowledge, which is hard or almost impossible for competitors to imitate. In order to be able to transfer tacit knowledge from one facility to another, within international organizations, the leaders have to take an active role. In order to investigate the leadership role, a case study of the implementation of the Toyota Way has been conducted to examine the knowledge transfer from a parent organization to one of its offshore production facilities. A qualitative research method was used where interviews with managers and observations of the facility were carried out at the offshore production facility. The conclusion of this research was that leadership presence is crucial and without supporting leadership the tacit knowledge transfer will not even be possible. It was found that the most significant factor for the leader to take into account in the knowledge transfer process, is his or her attitudes towards the philosophy; as these attitudes will be directly transferred to the employees. Furthermore, from the findings and previous theories a new model was created, which explains the leadership role in the tacit knowledge transfer process. The model consists of four steps, which the leader should constantly follow and those are; clear visualization, understanding, learning by doing and recurrence.