The role of organizational culture in knowledge management

Abstract

Today knowledge management (KM) is accepted as an integral element for organizations seeking to secure and keep a competitive advantage. In literature, it is pointed out that, to become a useful tool to the knowledge workers, KM also needs to take into account organizational culture, keeping in mind the values that define the culture such as: belief frameworks, shared attitudes, and the written and unwritten rules that support the understanding-, processing-, and utilization of knowledge. KM processes may organize and lead the knowledge flows, but it is the culture that determines whether these flows will be bolstered or constrained by social- and business-oriented cultural barriers. For example, knowledge sharing as an enabler for the transfer and creation of knowledge is directly impacted by the culture. In order to make KM initiatives work in practice, the employees must be willing to share their knowledge with others. Managers must understand the culture both at an organizational and community level. While culture often exists at the organizational level, each community may have its own norms, perspectives, collective understandings, and individual attitudes. The willingness to share and seek knowledge will be strongly influenced by these collective views. Internal competition is yet another aspect of the organizational culture that may interfere with the knowledge sharing and knowledge creation process. This paper aims to illustrate the influence organizational culture has on the implementation and application of KM initiatives and activities. Affording a healthy organizational social and business-oriented culture can be paramount in securing the successful implementation of any KM initiative or activity. Ensuring that there is a strong interdepartmental connectedness based on mutual trust and reciprocity is key. In particular, the paper will try to identify the problems with managing organizational culture that may hinder the success of the KM initiatives, i.e. learned responses that are hard-wired, falsehoods, etc. To summarise, the paper seeks to define a set of recommendations for steering organizational social and business-oriented culture towards one that is guided and strengthened by concepts of knowledge-sharing and continuous learning, so as to better afford the implementation and application of KM initiatives and activities.