Tacit Knowledge: The Wellspring to Sustainable Competitive Advantage

摘要

This paper, firstly, deals with the meaning and characteristics of tacit knowledge, divides tacit knowledge into four types, i.e. skills, mental models, ways of approaching problems, and organizational routines. Based on the above mentioned four types of tacit knowledge, this paper analyzes the relationships of tacit knowledge and sustainable competitive advantage, emphazing that tacit knowledge is the sources to sustainable competitive advantage because it is valuable, rare and very difficult to be copied or imitated by other firms. An example further validates that sustainable competitive advantage largely depend on tacit knowledge and the capabilities of developing and utilizing tacit knowledge.