Securing Knowledge Sharing: within and between customer projects: A case study of the knowledge sharing abilities for customer projects developing lithium-ion batteries

Abstract

Knowledge management and knowledge sharing is important for companies to increase their competitive advantage. There is a natural connection between knowledge management and project management as projects generate large amounts of knowledge and simultaneously depend on it. Therefore, knowledge sharing is crucial to capture, store and disseminate knowledge efficiently, limiting the risk of repeating mistakes or investigations.

The base of the thesis is a case study of Northvolt, a developer and producer of lithium-ion batteries located in Sweden, and their customer project teams. Through interviews, documentation and observations of the project teams within Northvolt, this thesis therefore aims to explore the knowledge sharing abilities of cross-functional customer project teams within a fast-growing and customer-centric organization. This includes, investigating the formal and informal processes used for knowledge sharing and also the influencing barriers and enablers, between and within the project teams. Together with previous literature on knowledge sharing, the findings of the thesis can be summarized accordingly:

• First, informal processes like networking are used to a large extent to share and to find knowledge, foremost within the project teams, but also between the project teams. • Second, the high use informal processes relying on relationships, build trust and strong ties between individuals, which supports the sharing of tacit knowledge. • Third, lack of time was the most prominent barrier both for formal and informal knowledge sharing. • Fourth, all enablers found have strong connections to interactions and relationships which especially induce informal knowledge sharing.