1. Why do you think this is an important story to tell company executives and managers? What is the main point of the story?

Stories like this one highlight the need for a knowledge management and on-going training – especially in the case of someone leaving a position. The story revealed a serious gap in communication and the fact that many organizations do not take advantage of their human capital, instead assuming that all the tasks and responsibilities that a person has is reflected in their job description, when in reality, employees frequently take on more duties and their jobs are much broader in scope than what it says on a piece of paper.

If managers ensure that knowledge is transferred and best practices are documented and reviewed, then mistakes like these are less likely to happen. Knowledge management is far more important than most people realize.

2. What kind of knowledge is most relevant to understanding the incidents in the case? What does the case tell us about the role of knowledge in organizations?

The employee at head office had incorporated messaging the pertinent parties about the chemicals into his job. It wasn’t written into his job description, it was simply something that he had learned to do. Knowing the reasoning behind the task, and even that it was a task, would be considered tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge can be picked up on the job through informal learning, which seems to be the case with the examples.

These incidents show that tacit knowledge and informal training are not highly regarded or given much importance. If the companies had been fully prepared through succession planning for the retirement of these employees, they would have given the replacement employees an opportunity to shadow the soon-to-be retired employees and not just expected the new employees to know all aspects of the job based on job