Tacit Knowledge Transfer Project

Study Participant Consent Form

Prior to the completion of the "Tacit Knowledge Transfer Analysis" project survey you are kindly asked to read the below consent form. As soon as you select the "I Agree" button at the end of the consent form you will be redirected to the online Tacit Knowledge Transfer Analysis Survey. The completion of the consent form is a standard procedure required of all researchers that collect data with human subjects.

You are invited to participate in a study titled "Tacit Knowledge Transfer Analysis" that is conducted by Milan Frankl, B.Sc. M.Sc., MBA, University of Victoria doctoral candidate in the department of Computer Science.

The purpose of this research is to explore various forms of tacit knowledge transfer when making business decisions while using rules of thumb. We define a rule of thumb as "a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation."

Knowledge transfer is identified in this research by evaluating a range of decisions made in various business scenarios when applying rules of thumb.

If you have further questions you may contact Milan by email at: mfrankl@uvic.ca or by phone at: 250-208-8801. This research is being conducted under the supervision of Dr. William W. Wadge, the Ph.D. supervisor. He may be contacted by phone at (250) 721-8791 or by email at wwadge@cs.uvic.ca.

In addition to being able to contact the researcher and Dr. William Wadge, at the above phone numbers and by email, you may verify the ethical approval of this study, or raise any concerns you might have, by contacting the Associate Vice-President, Research at the University of Victoria (250-472-4545).

Research of this type is important because it helps to inform researchers of tacit knowledge transfer process during business decisions.

You have been approached to take part in this study because you were identified by your business association as a senior executive of a small or medium sized Canadian business.

You will be asked to suggest a set of Rules of Thumb (RoTs) that you would apply in various business scenarios of your choice among a set of scenarios provided for your analysis.

Participation in this study may cause some inconvenience to you, including some frustrations experienced with the limitations of the scenarios proposed and time constraints in suggesting RoTs. There are no known or anticipated risks to you by participating in this research.

The potential scientifical benefits of your participation in this research include improving our knowledge of tacit knowledge transfer in some circumstances. Possible personal benefits for you include getting some of the aggregated results of the study.

Your participation in this research is completely voluntary. Should you do decide to participate, you may withdraw at any time without any explanation or consequences to you.

If you withdraw from the study your data will not be used and will be destroyed by deletion from any digital media it was saved on.

In terms of protecting your anonymity, the final study report will not contain identifying data. Your confidentiality and the confidentiality of the data will be protected by keeping it available to the researcher and the professor only. It is anticipated that the aggregated results of this study will be shared with the Ph.D. supervisor, Dr. William Wadge. Data from this study will be disposed of by erasing the electronic media containing the compiled data during this process. Paper copies (if any) will be shredded.

You may now print a copy of this consent form to serve as a personal reference. The digital copy of your consent form will be stored in a secured database for the purpose of academic oversight of ethical researcher conduct until the completion of this research project. The projected date of study completion is by June 30th, 2008. The electronic records of the "Consent Forms" will be deleted at or shortly after the study's completion projected date.

As soon as you depress the "I Agree" button at the end of this webpage, indicating that you understand the above conditions of participation you will be redirected to the online Tacit Knowledge Survey.

I fully understand the above conditions of participation in this study and have no further questions.