Management of knowledge in high technology: Balancing deliverables with learning in a project-team based firm

The use of information technologies, such as CAD/CAM/CAE and Group-ware, is expected to play an important role in the management of product development teams (Allen and Hauptman, 1987). Data are effectively stored, accessed and updated in these information systems and tools; however, procedural and tacit knowledge is accumulated individually (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Leonard-Barton, 1995). Given that organizations are adopting more team-based structures, individual employees become less effective in terms of knowledge accumulation and retrieval. Therefore, more emphasis on meeting a firm's knowledge needs might be placed on information systems.;Little is known about this topic from previous analysis (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). This present study is qualitative with the goal of identifying the relevant factors, problems, hypotheses and generating propositions for further research.;The units of analysis used in this study are the critical incidents of problem solving in product development projects. To collect data, I have followed these incidents, tracing how information and knowledge needs were served in each. Team members, leaders and functional managers from several different teams were interviewed to accomplish this task. The firm utilized for this study was a medium-sized telecommunications manufacturer with a matrix structure. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).