Culture: An Overlooked Key to Unlocking Organizational Knowledge

Article Summary for Week 6 Class 8

(Group: KMx6- Fatemeh, Skalk, Bee, Lanoi, Max, Roger)

Pauleen, D. (Ed.). (2006). Culture: An Overlooked Key to Unlocking Organizational Knowledge. In Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Knowledge Management (pp. 21-34). Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited.

Summary:

Audience: Academics and Knowledge managers, Knowledge Management Consultants

Theme / Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to propose three ideas that would be needed to be considered when building a Knowledge Management System (KMS) for a multinational organisation.

The authors propose that learning is closely linked to Knowledge, Information and Data. Thus for effective Knowledge Management (KM) a clear understanding of how learning happens in individuals from different cultural backgrounds are important.

The authors quote research that suggests that infants learn by making distinctions; by seeing differences and by using these differences to interpret and remember experiences.

Firms that wish to operate in a multicultural environment, then the knowledge management techniques they employ should take the cultural differences into account.

Boundary spanning is suggested as an appropriate component of a KMS. Boundary spanning objects have been identified that operates at three different levels. These are syntactic; semantic and the pragmatic.

At the syntactic level are shared knowledge repositories that enable communications of fact, tasks and actions. Data interchange and data architectures are of important since these facilitate knowledge transfer. Agreed standards also come into play.

At the semantic level standardised forms and methods make clear what the differences are in meaning. The objects at the semantic level help with the translation and localisation of knowledge so that group members can understand them. Here methods of translation could be employed.

At the pragmatic level the objects with embedded knowledge are transformed so that the entire team could understand as well as members not in the team. This is very difficult to do. Since communities may have different values and power relationships, and these can not be assumed.

The authors conclude that the syntactic and semantic levels are easily changed using current information technologies. The third level boundary spanning are a challenge and would require KMS to take cognisance of the difference in power and values.