The Division of Knowledge: Knowledge Transfer Practices in Outsourcing

The Division of Knowledge deals with the key distinction between the implicit and the explicit bodies of knowledge about firm processes, both within the client firm and across outsource vendors. This concerns the explicit codification for the client, by the vendor, of the tacit and informally transferred systems testing knowledge base of the firm. The primary theoretical contribution of this formalized explication of the parallel division of knowledge development lies in building an understanding of the knowledge transfer process across an outsourcing context in which the vendor is tasked with developing, documenting and sharing an explicit knowledge base of testing processes as both a working tool and a specific customer service owed to and owned by the client, while the client maintains an extensively tacit approach to skill development in its systems testing