Interactive patterns of knowledge management in organisations: insight from a fashion company

The categorisation of knowledge into explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge has provided an impression that explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge may be difficult to manage simultaneously. We use a grounded theory approach for determining how sales representatives in a fashion industry manage – create, acquire, manipulate, and share – both explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge concurrently. Our findings suggest that the boundary between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge is porous and the tools and techniques used to manage one kind of knowledge can also be used to manage the other kind of knowledge. Insights obtained through this research also show that a firm uses both technological system and social system parallel to managing knowledge.