Search results

Purpose –– The purpose of this chapter is to test the managerial decision-making knowledge of Mexican administrators managing maquiladora plants, or ‘twin plants’, in the effort to devise a practical skill set assessment.

Design/methodology/approach –– A sample of Mexican maquiladora managers was studied along dimensions of gender, experience, proximity to parent firm and upward mobility in order to assess the managers' level of ‘managerial intelligence’, where the constructs of tacit knowledge and intuition were used as proxies for managerial intelligence.

Findings –– While managerial decision-making may be classified as special forms of knowledge, assessment of this knowledge as forms of tacit ‘knowing’ did not prove successful.

Research limitations/implications –– Due to limitations of time and money in conjunction with the characteristically low response rate on surveys in Mexico, the sample was rather limited given the number and size of ‘twin plants’ and not wholly random. Thus, future research will need to address these shortcomings.

Originality/value –– This chapter is an effort to fill a gap in the literature regarding measures of tacit knowledge and the effort to elucidate the operation and management of plants in Mexico's maquiladora industry.

Tacit knowledge is gaining importance in the productive capability of many modern firms, yet the conditions under which the ability to share this form of knowledge between individuals or teams are yet to be resolved. Tacit knowledge is embedded in individuals, but is often most productive when combined with other forms of capital assets into firms. Transaction cost economics has been a useful tool in explaining the boundary of the firm, as well as the formation of teams within firms. The extent to which intra-firm teams compete or co-operate is analyzed by examining the network effects between teams in situations where tacit knowledge exists. We examine the costs and benefits that can be expected from “learning” in a multi-team firm and conduct a simulation to demonstrate the effects. Two scenarios are considered: one when there is almost no specialization between teams, and the second when specialization is extreme. We are able to demonstrate that only in cases of very large differences in tacit knowledge between teams is the transfer of such knowledge profitable. Thus the existence of separate silos within firms (i.e., non-networked teams) should not be condemned out of hand.

This chapter seeks to explain how societal institutions, which may exist at the national or regional levels, shape the types of organizational learning predominating at the level of the firm. It focuses on education and training systems, and labour markets as key societal institutions shaping the micro-level processes of learning and knowledge creation within and between firms. The chapter argues that tacit knowledge, which is difficult to create and transfer in the absence of social interaction and labour mobility, constitutes a most important source of learning and sustainable competitive advantage in the knowledge economy. It looks at the cases of Japan, the high-technology clusters in the USA and U.K., and Denmark as illustrative examples.