PROCESS OF INTERORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The present study aims to identify how the process of interorganizational knowledge sharing contributes to women’s entrepreneurship in the south of Santa Catarina State. A descriptive and exploratory methodological procedure with qualitative approach was carried, through a field research carried out with the associated women entrepreneurs of the State Council of Woman Entrepreneurs (CEME). The interorganizational knowledge sharing happens during meetings and events held by the CEME and in the Centers, as well as during interactions and informal dialogues among the participants, when tacit knowledge sharing occurs. Knowledge sharing causes organizational learning and contributes to the entrepreneurship of women participating on these events as following: (1) increase in knowledge; (2) creation of unity and connections; (3) information exchange; (4) motivation; (5) personal improvement; (6) International Journal for Innovation Education and Research www.ijier.net Vol:-6 No-09, 2018 International Educative Research Foundation and Publisher © 2018 pg. 66 employee development; (7) promotion of necessary changes and (8) networking.


Introduction
With the change in the world economic scenario in the last decades, and with the quickness of information transfer, knowledge became the main resource to companies that seek competitive differential and remain on the market. Thus, the search for means of management is necessary, which has been addressed by many authors of organizational theories (NONAKA; TAKEUCHI, 1997;DRUCKER, 1999;CHOO, 2000;TERRA, 2001).
However, the major emphasis of these studies is on the organizational knowledge management, in order to work with the intellectual capital existing in the company. These studies, when work only with internal knowledge, do not take the logic of society into consideration. In this sense, Castells (2006), when exposing about networks, states that every transformation on the economic scenario caused companies to form networks in order to achieve goals which were impossible to achieve alone. Hence, this study intends to understand interorganizational knowledge sharing, which was addressed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1997); however, it was not very well explored. Thus, with all challenges of endeavoring in nowadays economy, this study aims to identify how the process of interorganizational knowledge sharing contributes to women's entrepreneurship in the south of Santa Catarina State. The research has been applied by means of focal group interviews of women entrepreneurs in the southern region of Santa Catarina State, Brazil. Hence, the structure of this study follows the theoretical foundation with the themes entrepreneurship and knowledge management, followed by methodological procedures, results and research analysis and, concluding, their final considerations.

Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship can be considered an active method to generate resources (RONSTADT, 1984), so that the entrepreneur is the person having the desire and competences capable of innovate, generating personal and economic development (SCHUMPETER, 1984), taking all opportunities and taking calculated risks. Being an entrepreneur is to develop a passion about the business and sparing no efforts to secure the survival of this business (BAGGIO; BAGGIO, 2014). Entrepreneurs are motivated and proud of what they do, have the perspective of being recognized by the society and admired for what they have built (DORNELAS, has a wider sense to the receptor. Knowledge, differently from data and information, is understood as the result of the relations happening in environments and that, my means of a learning process, develops itself and results in new practices (DAVENPORT; PRUSAK, 1998). Knowledge divides into tacit and explicit. Tacit knowledge is internalized in the individuals and is difficult to be externalized and shared. Such kind of knowledge refers to beliefs, personal values and experiences, while explicit knowledge is easily accessible, as it is presented in formal language and can be found in documents, books, manuals, among other sources. According to the authors, knowledge creation in organizations is a result of the constant interaction between the two kinds of knowledge (NONAKA; TAKEUCHI, 1997). This interaction among knowledges, also known as conversion, occurs in a spiral-shape, known as SECI, and happens in different levels: individual, group, organizational and interorganizational, starting by socialization, phase in which sharing of life experience and mental models occur. Subsequently, the stage of externalization happens, in which groups discuss and reflect upon what has been previously addressed; then, there is the stage of combination, the junction of the new and the old knowledge. To conclude, the stage the authors call "learning by doing", that is, the internalization, in which individuals put the new knowledge, resulting from the spiral-shaped process, in practice (NONAKA; TAKEUCHI, 1997).

Knowledge Sharing
To Fleury and Oliveira Junior (2001, p. 295), knowledge sharing "is defined as the process of knowledge dissemination inside a company or with other companies, under the control of the company owning this knowledge". Probst, Raub and Romhardt (2006, p. 136) define knowledge sharing and distribution as "a process of distribution centrally directed of knowledge between a given group of employees or it can be a knowledge transfer among individuals, or among teams or work groups" because knowledge is an element usually transferred during personal exchange among individuals. Tarapanoff (2006) states that, when conceptualizing knowledge sharing, this is characterized as a process, not as an object per se. In order to have an easy, comfortable and transparent knowledge and information sharing implemented, the environment should be favorable to it, even before the implementation of usual knowledge management processes such as technologies, classifications, among others.
To Probst, Raub and Romhardt (2006, p. 161), "knowledge sharing and distribution have a prominent position in knowledge management", because such activities are the foundation for vital competitive factors such as time and quality, besides its leveraging, and for being a common thread to other aspects of knowledge management. The authors also emphasize that knowledge sharing and distribution in the organization is crucial, so that the information or experiences of individuals can be disseminated and used by everybody in the company. Thus, the premise is that there should have a knowledge coming from forward ideas regarding the development of procedures and routines for knowledge creation, flow and sharing, and list training programs, informal networks, administrative experience shared and communicated through a culture of support as a mechanism for knowledge sharing. Complementarily, Rosa et al. (2011) show that knowledge can be shared by means of many mechanisms: tacit knowledge sharing demands mechanisms where interaction among people occur, while in order to explicit knowledge sharing happen, it is necessary to have tools in order to make the documentation of knowledge possible. In a study about development of capabilities through interorganizational sharing, Nodari (2013) points out that there is a greater tendency of companies to participate in a knowledge sharing relation, in comparison to individuals. In other words, the more knowledge a company donates to a partner, the more the receiver will be able to donate its knowledge. That is, the more knowledge is collected, the more probable to donate it. Thus, it forms a vicious circle of knowledge sharing. The authors also state that the establishment of this process of donation and collection of knowledge is favorable to the development of dynamic capabilities; however, such relation is guided by the absorptive capacity of the company. Absorptive capacity is the ability of a company to recognize the value of new and external information, assimilate and apply them to commercial purposes, what is crucial for innovative capacities (COHEN; LEVINTHAL, 1990). All this is added to the fact that, in order to develop organizational competences and, consequently, impact positively on organizational performance, the company shall not only provide knowledge, but also collect it (NODARI, 2013). Chen et al. (2006) forward ideas on the crucial importance of external knowledge to small and mediumsized companies, and complete that they are in need of external knowledge and interorganizational knowledge transfer. Through their survey regarding interorganizational knowledge, which promoted a vision about practices and needs to practice knowledge transfer in small and medium-sized companies in

Results
The present section addressed the data description and result discussion, as per data collected by the researchers. As shown by Table 1, the identification of some forms related by both groups was identified, in which interorganizational knowledge sharing promoted by the CEME meetings and by Centers contribute to women entrepreneurs participating on these events. Table 1. Improvements brought to entrepreneurship.

Increase in knowledge
Motivation to act in companies Creation of unity and Through the stories of the interviewees, both groups listed improvements that knowledge sharing provided by the CEME and by the Centers has brought not only to their enterprises, but also to women in the role of entrepreneurs.
A factor highlighted was that knowledge sharing which happens even between entrepreneurs that compete on the market. The women interviewed welcomed this sharing and agree that, in this case, competition does not interfere and all sectors are benefited by it, because brings growth. This knowledge is presented in several ways, such as technical visits, lectures, workshops, meetings and events held for the members and, mostly, it is shown in informal interactions among the entrepreneurs, what they call exchange of information. During these meetings, there are moments in which the members dialogue informally among each other. These are great opportunities for tacit knowledge sharing. Rosa et al. (2011) supports this practice and shows that tacit knowledge sharing demands mechanisms in which the interaction among people happens. According to the women interviewed, these opportunities provided by the meetings add a lot to their businesses, towards motivation, overcoming barriers, generation of new ideas and in problem solving, as stated by the interviewees E4 of Group 1: "The exchange of ideas adds value to every kind of business" (E4, Group 1). The interviewee E1 of Group 2 complements and states: I am here since 2010 and I have learned a lot of things, indeed, besides the exchange among colleagues. Sometimes we think we have a huge problem, and talk to other person that also have it, and you minimize your problem after this talk. It is like a therapy, you know, so I guess this information exchange is very important to women entrepreneurs' lives and to create partnerships (E1, Group 2).
These reports meet the thoughts of Chen et al. (2006), when state that the involvement in activities of interorganizational knowledge transfer, social and electronic networks are important channels to companies to acquire the knowledge needed: it is more likely to acquire important knowledge from social networks than through electronic networks.
The women interviewed state that such knowledge make the entrepreneurs see the necessity of change in their endeavors, which becomes an improvement provided by sharing. When having it, they have the opportunity to see the mistakes made towards their endeavors and, from these mistakes, promote the changes needed to fix them, as stated by the interviewee E3 of Group 2: "I guess that is it, we will see the things we are doing right and other simple things that we did not realize and understand that everybody make mistakes, so, we vary, improve what we learn and fix things we were not doing right".
The women interviewed also state that the participation in meetings is an opportunity that depart them from the daily duties imposed by the direction of their businesses, dedicating some time to think, reflect and make plans to their endeavors, what is usually not possible due to the overload imposed by work and personal life tasks as mothers and wives, as stated by the interviewee E7 of Group 1: "I should take a time