| Retiring executives are taking with them the experiences of a generation and remaining leaders are struggling to capture tacit knowledge before it is lost. The problem addressed in the study was that methods for preserving institutional memory during leadership transition had not been adequately defined. The purpose of the qualitative instrumental case study was to explore the methods in use for preserving institutional memory, types of knowledge management technologies employed, and what knowledge leaders perceived as important to pass on to employees. Instrumental case studies develop insight into phenomena of interest through examining the case. The population for the study was faculty, staff, and administration of a small, rural community college in Southwest Arkansas. Participants were purposefully selected and included five administrators, five faculty, five staff, and the retiring chief executive. Participants answered interview questions about tacit knowledge transfer, knowledge management technologies, and content of knowledge transferred. Analysis of interview responses revealed themes related to each research question. Results revealed leaders at the studied institution rely on personal communications and e-mails to capture and disseminate knowledge. Electronic information is not centralized, rather decentralized among individual employees. The technologies currently in place at the studied institution are inappropriate for capturing and sharing tacit information. Database technologies are available at the studied institution, but none are used to capture tacit information. Specific knowledge perceived as important to preserve include the importance of treating people with respect and that the student is the most important person to the college employee. Implications and recommendations relate to knowledge transfer and knowledge management technology. Even in an organization with a culture of openness and trust, barriers to tacit information may still exist. Based on the findings of the study, institutional memory at the studied institution is at risk for loss. To protect the knowledge assets of the institution, leaders should implement a structured, centralized knowledge management system. A searchable database should be implemented for the input, storage, sharing, and retrieval of institutional documents. The future blog and intranet projects should be pursued and created to allow all users to create, store, and retrieve contextual information relating to decision-making. |
