International Assignments Management in a Knowledge-intensive Organisation: A Case Study

Abstract

Knowledge represents a crucial part of the development of intellectual capital (IC). Therefore, the way knowledge is managed can impact IC creation and/or loss in an organisation. However, the need to manage knowledge resides in the strategic perspective of knowledge to sustain competitive advantage in a knowledge economy, especially in the context of international assignments. This work has the goal of understanding how personnel mobility affects the knowledge and intellectual capital management of a knowledge-intensive organisation. This study therefore applies a qualitative methodology to analyse how knowledge and intellectual capital are managed in the context of international assignments from a Portuguese knowledge-intensive organisation. Exploratory interviews and direct observation were used to achieve the goal of this study. This work identifies three main knowledge management processes that are involved in the context of international assignments, namely knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding. The goal is to increase knowledge transfer and sharing behaviours while reducing knowledge hiding ones. This study goes further and identifies that power, motivation and culture can influence the way these processes occur in an organisation Considering the work here presented, the results cannot be generalised to other organisations and industries due to the nature of the applied methodology, but it can serve as a benchmark for other organisations in the same industry. If other researchers find this topic interesting, it would be pertinent to conduct research in other organisations and industries to achieve a broader understanding and compare results.