Facilitating knowledge sharing Improving SOP adaptation and cross-sectional collaboration

Due to a lack of cross-sectional collaboration and standardization in job performance in a ‘Finance and Accounting department’, at a large public Danish University, the management decided on two interventions: Firstly, eight operations employees participated in a ten-hour Training Within Industry – Job Instruction (TWI-JI) course and secondly a trainer Community of Practice (CoP) was established.

The study followed the case in a ten-month period. Qualitative data for the employee perceived organizational change and the employee-assessed causes of the change shows that TWI-JI was mostly related to changes in training and less to knowledge sharing. Analysis of the time trainers used on training and on the development of job instructions (JI’s) shows that trainers performed activity related to the change causes .

The study documents that the case company experienced a substantial positive change within the organizational capabilities ’Training’ and ‘Knowledge sharing’, and that the TWI-JI intervention has played an important role. We propose that TWI-JI could play an important role in organizational knowledge sharing because the method can improve the organizational capability to develop knowledge through JI development and share knowledge through training sessions.

The lack of data describing process change and by this being a single organization case study limits the results.