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Case Study
OTICON
Today's knowledge special: spaghetti
Knowledge has been recognized as a valuable resource necessary for organizational growth and sustained competitive advantage, especially for organizations competing in uncertain environment. Grant (1996) and Liebeskind (1996) argued that knowledge is an organization's most valuable resource because it represents intangible assets, operational routines and creative processes that are hard to imitate. This is probably why Oticon focuses so much on knowledge assets and the management. Because it is an innovation based industry whereby a single ingenious innovation can truly gain it an upper hand in the market it operates in. Most organizations do not possess all the required knowledge that needed within their formal boundaries and must rely on linkages to outside organizations and individuals to acquire knowledge.
In Oticon, they do so free from hierarchy and local rules. Though it has many different teams working on different projects, informal and reciprocal knowledge sharing between individuals are sustained through team mixing and no set team structure.
Traditional organisational structures are less conducive to information sharing; Oticon's approach ?resembling a plate of spaghetti' enables barriers that may exist under the traditional approach to be eliminated and the transfer of knowledge seems to flow easily between business units. Oticon encourages the sharing of information, via cross-functional and cross-hierarchical. Team members work in open areas and are not confined with whom they may relate, as is the case within a traditional organisational structure.
On the other hand, there are of course risks prevalent i ...