An experimental investigation of knowledge acquisition techniques

Abstract

Purpose

Knowledge is a key driver for the competitive success of organizations, but about 90 percent of organizational knowledge is inside employees’ minds with personal essence; therefore, this paper provides valuable vision for managers by exploring knowledge acquisition (KA) techniques and personality type. The purpose of this paper is to examine KA techniques and explore the impact of personality type on the KA process in the aerospace industry.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper examines KA techniques through an empirical study involving 83 participants to take part in KA sessions. For exploring techniques, a questionnaire was used, and also the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was used to identify participants’ personality type. The impact of personality type on KA processes was determined by correlation analysis.

Findings

Analyses confirmed some association between the type of personality and KA process. In addition, the findings of exploring questionnaire items showed that participants gave the laddering technique the highest rating.

Originality/value

The paper may be of high value to researchers in the field of KA, especially in aerospace industries, because there is very little experimental investigation of KA, and it also provides valuable information and guidelines that hopefully will help researchers to select appropriate KA techniques.

Citation

Dehghani, M. and Akhavan, P. (2017), "An experimental investigation of knowledge acquisition techniques", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 493-514. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-07-2016-0132