Abstract
Organizations are facing many challenges to remain relevant in the face of new technology, emerging markets, and changing consumer behaviors. Many organizations look to become learning organizations with knowledge management strategies to leverage their knowledge assets and continuously innovate their strategies and products. However, organizations struggle to achieve success with knowledge management because their organizational culture does not support knowledge-sharing and must be adapted for this new behavior. Knowledge must flow through the organization, and so, therefore, these necessary behaviors must work within the existing corporate culture. Observations from a case study at a software company are discussed, and a new knowledge management model, the Knowledge Management Triangle, is introduced. The Knowledge Management Triangle is a simple model to explain and implement knowledge management within organizations and is customizable to work within the organization's culture to ensure the new knowledge management behaviors are appropriately adopted.
TopIntroduction
Knowledge, by its very definition, is based on experience and, therefore, activity. For knowledge management to be successful, knowledge cannot be treated as a static asset within an organization; it must flow through the organization and create action for it to create value. Demonstrating value with knowledge management activities can be a challenge. Academics and practitioners create knowledge management models to describe knowledge management activities, enable the implementation of knowledge management activities within organizations, and to assess the maturity of these implementations. Knowledge management activities can take many forms, but one of the most important activities that delivers value is how knowledge flows through the organization (O'Dell & Grayson, 1998). This flow of knowledge is how an organization will learn from its knowledge assets, and it is how the organization will generate new learnings that it can leverage to create value; however, without the proper cultural reinforcements, the flow of knowledge can be trapped, and the knowledge management program can fail to make an impact (McDermott & O'Dell, 2001). Technology is often looked at to solve these problems, but organizational culture will make the most significant difference between success and failure (Zheng et al., 2010; Ruppel & Harrington, 2001). The organization's culture will impact employees' motivation to share knowledge, collaborate, and leverage others' lessons learned, not the information technology that the organization uses to facilitate these processes (Alvesson, 2002; Park et al., 2004; Ho, 2009). Furthermore, the best way to overcome cultural barriers to implementing knowledge management has been to work within the existing culture rather than changing it entirely (McDermott & O'Dell, 2001).
The objectives of this chapter are to discuss the importance of knowledge flowing through the organization, and how by doing this, organizations can become learning organizations. Organizational culture, how organizational culture impacts knowledge management, and the role leadership plays is discussed. The main section of the chapter explores existing knowledge management models that promote the flow of knowledge and how culture can enable or prohibit knowledge flows. A new knowledge management model, the Knowledge Management Triangle, is proposed and explored; this model leverages Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (1943) as a mental model to facilitate greater understanding of the knowledge management model to employees who may not be familiar with knowledge management. Lastly, the chapter suggests how the knowledge activities can work with the culture to deliver results by leveraging observations from a case study at an organization in the software and technology industry where the Knowledge Management Triangle was implemented.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Organizational Culture: The beliefs, values, and systems that guide how individuals within the organization behave and accomplish tasks. A common way of explaining this is “how the work gets done when no one is watching.”
Knowledge-Sharing Culture: A culture that promotes the communication, transmission, and absorption of organizational learnings and experiences so that the individuals within the organization may learn from each other and improve the organization’s overall performance.
Knowledge Repository: A system or tool that is used to store and access organizational knowledge, artifacts, and other content. Often referred to as an intranet, database, or knowledge management tool.
Tacit Knowledge: The experiential and personal knowledge that a person gains through experience and resides in their head.
Culture Values: Principles that organizations deem important for the success of the organization. They are typically determined by senior leadership and leveraged as a model for proper behavior and decision-making.
Learning Organization: An organization that has a systematic process of leveraging its knowledge to continuously change and improve.
Knowledge Management Model: A method of conveying knowledge management activities and how they function. It is used as a learning tool to make these complex systems easier to understand.
Organizational learning: The way organizations learn from their existing practices and outcomes and continuously improve and drive better performance in the future.
Knowledge Hoarding: When teams or individuals withhold knowledge, information or learnings from the organization’s knowledge repository and others in the organization. This behavior is usually motivated by self-preservation, a need to feel secure within the organization, or some other general need to have power over others. It negatively impacts the organization’s knowledge management strategy because the organization does not have access to what these individuals know.