How to utilize tacit knowledge in health organizations: An Iranian perspective

Background: Studies show that 90% of an organization’s knowledge is embedded and synthesized in its employees’ minds. Thus, when employees leave the organization or their positions change, their valuable knowledge, skills, and experiences are lost, however, if used properly, tacit knowledge can be a source of innovation and competitive advantage in an organization. This study aimed at exploring the methods for sharing and utilizing tacit knowledge in health organizations. Methods: In this study, qualitative approach was adopted to explore ways of utilizing tacit knowledge in health organizations. Tacit knowledge experts, who had published at least one relevant article, conducted 17 individual and 2 group interviews. Purposeful sampling was used to select the participants. Methods for sharing and utilizing tacit knowledge were explored by holding in-depth semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: The results were summarized into 5 categories and 18 themes. The categories included ‘identification of different dimensions of organizational knowledge’, ‘prerequisites of tacit knowledge utilization’, ‘defining the process of tacit knowledge utilization’, ‘converting tacit to explicit knowledge’, and ‘converting tacit to tacit knowledge’. Participants believed that the process of converting tacit to explicit knowledge was a cyclical process that included the understanding the existing situation and detecting knowledge entry points, identifying knowledge items and harvesting them, assessment, codification, and standardization, entry into knowledge repository, and updating. Conclusion: Our results revealed that health organizations need the prerequisites of tacit knowledge sharing to acquire the capacity to utilize this kind of knowledge. Because the themes extracted in this study are rarely used in health organizations, the results will be helpful in guiding the development of knowledge utilization strategies and planning in these organizations.