Diseño organizativo, facilitadores y creación de conocimiento. Un estudio empírico en las grandes empresas españolas.

Abstract

The general mission of this research is to know to what extent the organizational design establishes the necessary conditions for the knowledge creation considering enablers as intermediate variables. So, the relation between the variables of design and the knowledge creation is not a direct relation but it necessarily goes through a series of intermediate variables, enablers or impellers of the processes of knowledge creation. To achieve this objective we have structured this work in three main blocks. The first block defines the basic concepts of learning, knowledge, information and memory and their interrelations. Also, it is defined what it is understood by knowledge management and different approaches are reviewed, thus elaborating a synthesis proposal and extracting interesting reflections. The second block is the central part of this investigation and studies to what extent certain conditions of organizational design favor the knowledge creation through enablers. The chosen enablers are the ones proposed in the model of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), Nonaka, Toyama and Konno (2001) and Von Krogh, Ichijo and Nonaka (2001), namely, intention, autonomy, fluctuation and creative chaos, redundancy, variety, and commitment. This second block defines relations between the variables of organizational design, considering the classic processes of differentiation and integration, the enablers and the knowledge creation, showing finally a general model of relations and formulating proposals to contrast. In the third and last block an empirical quantitative study carried out from a sample of 167 large Spanish companies is made. One of the most important contributions is the validation of twenty scales, being the most outstanding the validation of a scale to measure knowledge creation. The research finishes with the results of the investigation, the testing of the proposals formulated out of the theoretical frame through a system of structural equations, the limitations, and the future lines of investigation.