An Intelligent Transport Organization and its Knowledge Networks : Understanding Tacit Knowledge Networks Through Knowledge Transfers within and Beyond the Organization

This paper examines the interaction and development of tacit (informal) knowledge networks and how knowledge transfers occur within an intelligent transport organization (ITS Australia). The work is informed on a biological theory of organization combining Maturana and Varela's concept of autopoiesis [7; 24; 4; 5] and Karl Popper's evolutionary epistemology [20; 1; 2]. This claims many economic organizations are dynamic, evolving, hierarchically complex adaptive (i.e., biological) entities in their own rights. Understanding the impact of tacit knowledge networks is important for two reasons. First, a true intelligent, adaptive system is one which is self sustaining, and second, tacit knowledge networks can support the sustainability of any organization and its networks in both social and physical senses [8; 25; 14; 11]. Organizational policy documentation needs to, at the very least, reflect concepts of sustainability through understanding the holistic influences of socially intelligent networks