Gestão do conhecimento pessoal: estudo de caso com pesquisadores seniores

Abstract

The study is a qualitative research in which seniors researchers from a research center located in Rio de Janeiro were interviewed. The aim of this study was to comprehend how senior researchers deal with personal knowledge management. The Personal Knowledge Management, according to Wright (2005), can be defined as the capacity to access and apply information and cognitive resources in processes to improve effectiveness, the production and the worker individual innovation. Through the interview in depth, with a semi-structural guide, we got the perception of each interviewed about his/her personal knowledge management practices. From the inductive analysis of Thomas (2006) five categories were identified. The first of them represents the perception from the interviewed about what personal knowledge management represents, and the other four represent the way these interviewed deal with their own knowledge. The categories that represent the identified processes were: (i) manage demand by knowledge, (ii) manage learning, (iii) manage connections, and (iv) manage expertise. The first category identified that the process of managing demand by knowledge can start from the company. The second process is about managing learning through the activities with the aim to get new knowledges, considering the extent and depth of the knowledge need to execute the expertise activities. The process of managing connections represents the search, construction and application of the personal knowledge through connections with individuals from the personal web, also including the institutions in which these members of web belong to. The fourth and last category identified the process of managing expertise, which are those activities that the individual develops effectively in his specified knowledge. They can reinforce or alter the knowledge that the individual has. It is when the individual knowledge normally incorporates the organization's knowledge. The research also shows conflicts in results found out in the references, influenced by the Pattern Match technique, proposed by Trochim (1989), building a comparative board among the found results and the PKM models of Efimova (2005), Wright (2005), Cheong and Tsui (2011), and Sondari (2013). The result highlights that management practices need to adapt to new forms of employee contribution, and that better understanding this process at the individual level, organizations can facilitate and benefit from personal knowledge management.