KM, culture and compromise: interventions to promote knowledge sharing supported by technology in corporate environments

Abstract

The theme of knowledge sharing is discussed extensively in the knowledge management literature. Such work tends to focus on the barriers that impede knowledge sharing activity. Of these ‘culture’ is commonly cited as a major obstacle. This article examines what is meant by the term ‘culture’. In the context of efforts to promote good practice in knowledge management, it is argued that straightforward reference to culture as a barrier to knowledge sharing is inadequate. Rather, firms should be looking at power issues and, in particular, organizational politics to explain success and failure in attempts to motivate knowledge sharing. The domain of sociotechnical studies is considered as a means of unpicking cultural issues at work in specific environments through the deployment of actor-network theory to identify shifting organizational power relationships.