Knowledge Management in Emergent Amateur Organizational Cultures

This chapter examines issues of knowledge management and cultural knowledge in the context of Formula SAE student engineering teams. Approximately 500 student teams field a small formula-style racecar in a series of annual competitions held globally. Despite being small, student-run teams with limited resources and high organizational turnover, strong teams have developed strategies to sustain knowledge creation and work to build the team's cultural knowledge over multiple annual design cycles. This chapter highlights three knowledge management challenges: organizational renewal due to graduation of senior members, capturing vital yet departing tacit and explicit knowledge, and engaging multi-year and collaborative projects. The chapter recommends that strong faculty and institutional support can help FSAE teams develop into stable knowing organizations with deep tacit, explicit, and cultural knowledge bases.