Knowledge Transfer as a Leverage of Change, the Case of the Public Prosecutor Office of Naples

The public prosecutor’s office (PPO) of Naples is the largest prosecutorial institution in Italy. Because of its size, visibility and location in Naples the PPO is an interesting and difficult case from an organization development perspective. Innovation programs can be challenging there. Nonetheless this article seeks to see whether there is innovation in the PPO of Naples. To do so it will consider the program called “work experiences” implemented in the PPO of Naples in the first semester of 2013. It was designed within the general framework of a joint partnership signed by the University Federico II and the public prosecutor office of Naples and provided the human resources of undergraduates and graduate students, selected on the basis of merit, and assigned to specific organizational units within the PPO. The program proved to be effective in triggering processes of micro-innovation within these units and in promoting a collective awareness of the tacit knowledge within the informal organization of the PPO.