Motivation, knowledge transfer, and organizational forms

The importance of knowledge for gaining competitive advantage is widely accepted. The authors I distinguish between explicit and tacit forms of knowledge and argue that different kinds of motivation (extrinsic and intrinsic) are crucial for generating and transferring the two forms of knowledge. They analyze various organizational and motivational devices with respect to their suitability for making use of explicit and tacit knowledge. In so doing they particularly emphasize that some organizational forms can crowd out intrinsic motivation and thus have detrimental effects on the transfer of knowledge.