Knowledge Creation and Sharing in a Project Team: An Organizational Analysis Based on the Concept of Organizational Relation

In today's competitive arena, knowledge and intellectual assets management seems to be the best answer when looking to gain a competitive edge. Furthermore, traditional approaches to knowledge management based on a "single company perspective" are becoming limited; more frequently the problem is to manage "inter‑organizational "collaborations, projects and temporary structures. It is thus necessary to rethink some organizational topics (organizational structures design, personnel involvement and motivation mechanisms etc.) and to review them by introducing suitable and effective modifications with respect to specific knowledge processes. This paper takes the "Organizational Relational Approach" into consideration and applies a method for describing and interpreting the interactions among organizational actors‑ also belonging to different organizations‑ defined as Organizational Relations (OR): the method analyses these relations according to several distinct dimensions: the goals of the OR and the level of sharing for the organizational actors; the organizational rules regulating the behaviour of actors within the OR; the technological and organizational tools supporting the OR; the cultural background associated to the OR. Only when all four dimensions are highly developed is it possible to qualify the existing organizational relations as "rich "or, in this context, as "knowledge intensive" relations. The paper applies the Organizational Relations method of analysis to a successful case study of knowledge transfer from the aerospace field to the health care field. We examined the joint research project carried out by the ASI,‑Italian Space Agency‑ Ferrari DTM and two Italian Orthopaedics Departments. This project has led to the industrial production of an innovative external bone‑setting device. This analysis explains the key factors for success and the effectiveness of the managerial decisions that were adopted. Empirical findings derived from the case study analysis on one hand and results obtained from the application of the Organizational Relational Method on the other have been found to be convergent and this constitutes a good validation of the method used.