The Power of Unstructured Data: A Study of the Impact of Tacit Knowledge on Business Performance

This study examined the incorporation of tacit knowledge into corporate business intelligence and its impact on business performance, specifically analyzing individual productivity. Business productivity in relation to the use of knowledge has been investigated but using macro-dimensions not specifically oriented to individual workers' productivity. This study was based on externalization, one of the modes in the theory of organizational knowledge creation (that is, converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge). The findings on the literature stated that knowledge is the most important piece of business competitive advantage and that tacit knowledge is a key part of that knowledge. This research found that tacit knowledge did not influence individual engineers' productivity and as such did not affect business performance. Additionally, it found that tacit knowledge was not a factor that could be used to predict individual productivity. This research was the first attempt to investigate individual productivity in relation to tacit knowledge.