Knowledge Acquisition

Abstract

The Claims department of the ‘National Netherlands’ (NN) insurance company, the Sales and Customer Services division of the ‘Postbank’, and the Travel business unit of the Netherlands Railways all have one thing in common: they structure knowledge-sharing in order to provide individuals with access to organizational knowledge. The goal of knowledge-sharing in these cases is to acquire knowledge for the purpose of using it in operational day-to-day work processes. Learning takes place on the individual level: the individual learns from the organization. The employees do not provide any added value to the company either through the knowledge that they possess or have internalized. That is not to say that these people are uneducated. On the contrary, in order to perform their tasks well secondary or even tertiary level education is an important requirement.