Undocumented Knowledge Is Also a Risk for the Company
When essential knowledge remains concentrated in a few people, the company becomes more dependent on them and more vulnerable when its team changes.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY
A company can possess extensive knowledge and still have limited capacity to preserve it. This happens when essential information about customers, processes, decisions, exceptions and ways of solving problems is concentrated in certain people and has not been transformed into knowledge accessible to the organisation.
This situation is common in companies that have grown from the direct experience of the owner or long-serving professionals. Knowledge was acquired through practice and transmitted informally. As long as the same people remain available, the model may work. The risk arises when the organisation needs to transfer responsibilities, replace people or go through a significant change.
Research on organisational routines shows why this is more complex than simply writing procedures. Routines can function as repositories of capabilities and are related to stability, learning, flexibility and knowledge transfer (BECKER et al., 2005; PENTLAND; GOH, 2021). What needs to be preserved is not only the sequence of tasks, but the capability that allows them to be performed appropriately.
Imagine a company in which only one person knows how to manage a strategic customer. That person knows the history, commitments, exceptions and ways of solving problems. If that knowledge disappears when the person leaves, the organisation has not lost only information: it has lost part of its capacity to manage that relationship.
This phenomenon also appears in teams that depend on specialists. A formal process may exist, but relevant decisions are hidden in exceptions, criteria and experiences that only a particular person has mastered. Continuity requires making it possible to identify where knowledge resides, who needs access to it, which processes use it and how it can be transferred.
A study published in 2026 in Industrial and Corporate Change examined transactive memory systems — mechanisms through which teams distribute and integrate specialised knowledge — and related them to the functioning of teams that need to coordinate complex tasks (KOST; HÆREM; PENTLAND, 2026).
This does not mean documenting everything. Excessive documentation can produce files that no one consults. The objective is to prioritise what is necessary to perform essential processes, make relevant decisions, deal with recurring situations and preserve important learning.
Ultimately, preserving knowledge means preserving capability. A company becomes more autonomous when it can transform individual experience into organisational capability without losing its ability to learn, adapt and improve. This combination of preservation and adaptation is central to continuity.
References
BECKER, Markus C.; LAZARIC, Nathalie; NELSON, Richard R.; WINTER, Sidney G. Applying organizational routines in understanding organizational change. Industrial and Corporate Change, v. 14, n. 5, p. 775–791, 2005. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dth071.
PENTLAND, Brian T.; GOH, Kenneth T. Organizational routines and organizational change. In: POOLE, Marshall Scott; VAN DE VEN, Andrew H. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation. 2. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. p. 339–363. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198845973.013.16.
KOST, Dominique; HÆREM, Thorvald; PENTLAND, Brian T. Transactive memory systems and team performance: the mediating role of routines. Industrial and Corporate Change, v. 35, n. 4, p. 955–982, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtaf062.