Our company is looking to set up a Tumblr account. If we post our WordPress blogs on our Tumblr page as well, will Google penalize us for having "duplicate content?"

[ConservationM]

Duplicate content

[BenFox]

If your getting Tumblr blog to try and engage more with the community there you might want to consider creating different content than for Wordpress. From what I've seen of Tumblr the content that spreads well is different from the stuff you find on normal blogs.

In answer to your question it's definitely not best practice and although there is no  active penalty but you will find that your Tumblr blog starts cannibalizing the Wordpress traffic.

ps. Tumblr loves GIFs

[ConservationM]

Thank you very much for the help! We'll definitely keep this in mind going forward.

[LVH]

Best practice is to NEVER post the same content on 2 or more different sites.  It is considered duplicate content and although you may not get a penalty the Fox is right when he says that one site will win over the other and chances are you  will lose unless you have a better page rank and authority than tumblr...

The only way for what you want to do to work is to be able to add REL=author attribute as well as microdata (HTML 5) distinguishing who owns the original content (yours) to the tumblr content.  and that's not happening...

Tumblr is great for quick posting with links back to your site, try and create a brand for yourself...

Good luck