Effectuation: Exploring a Third Dimension to Tacit Knowledge

• Author: Bassem E. Maamari,Rana E. Jisr
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1536

■Research Article

Effectuation: Exploring a Third

Dimension to Tacit Knowledge

Rana E. Jisr

1

and Bassem E. Maamari

2

*

1

Faculty of Economic Sciences and Business Administration, Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon

2

Management Studies, School of Business, Beirut, Lebanon

Although much research in knowledge management has linked tacit knowledge with its two dimensions, the cogni-

tive and technical, with innovation performance in firms, but exploring a new dimension for tacit knowledge is still a

core tenet. In this study, we propose effectuation asa new dimension of tacit knowledge and empirically test a quan-

tifiable model with 331 respondents in the service industry in Lebanon. So our objective is to discover whether this

new dimension can enhance the potential of tacit knowledge in affecting innovation performance and thus can very

likely be considered a development to the theory of tacit knowledge. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge is a vital asset in any company. The

growing interest in this topic is that knowledge to-

day is considered as an effective resource that af-

fects innovation performance in organizations. For

this reason, researchers are trying to understand

the underpinning of knowledge through examining

its two dimensions: explicit and tacit knowledge

(Polanyi, 1966; Teece, 1981). Explicit knowledge is

external, ubiquitous, easily exchanged, codified,

and stored (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). While tacit

knowledge is extremely personal—it is viewed as

non-verbal and hard to express or store. Many stud-

ies in the area of knowledge seem to focus on tacit

knowledge and its impact on innovation in firms

(Sternberg et al., 1993; Koskinen and Vanharanta,

2002; Alwis and Hartman, 2008; Jisr and Maamari,

2014). However, little attention has been paid to ex-

ploring this knowledge as a predictor for future

success.

Not surprisingly, a meta-analysis summarizes

data on 9897 new ventures published in the Journal

of Business Venturing, where a positive relationship

was found between the principles of effectuation

and new venture performance (Read et al., 2009a).

This analysis inspires the authors of this study to ex-

amine the relationship between one of the principles

of effectuation, with innovation performance in the

service industry in Lebanon. Three primary ques-

tions might arise at this stage: first, which principle

of the effectuation logic can be linked with innova-

tion performance? Second, what is the relationship

between effectuation and the two dimensions of

tacit knowledge: the cognitive and technical? Fi-

nally, could effectuation be a third dimension of

tacit knowledge?

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND

HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

Tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge has gained its importance in the or-

ganization because it is viewed as a personal asset,

inarticulable, and difficult to express or store. The

origin of the word “tacit”comes from a Latin verb

“tacere,”which means “silent”(Sapienza, 2002).

Polanyi (1966–1983) finds that tacit knowledge

consists of two types of knowledge: fundamental

and supplementary (Scott, 1966). Fundamental

knowledge refers to the entirety or significance of

an object, and supplementary knowledge refers to

the details or parts of an object (Polanyi, 1966;

Grene, 1969). To explain this phenomenon, Polanyi

refers to Gestalt psychology, “when we recognize a

whole, we see its parts differently from the way

we see them in isolation”(Grene, 1969, p. 140). To

simplify this concept, researchers give the example

of recognizing someone’s face. Usually, one does

not focus on any particular feature, but rather on

*Correspondence to: Bassem E. Maamari, Management Studies,

School of Business, Sadat Street Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

E-mail: bassem.maamari@lau.edu.lb

Knowledge and Process Management

Volume 24 Number 1 pp 72–78 (2017)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1536

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.