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' Academy ot Management Executive, 20D0. Vol. 14, No. 4
Diagnosing cultural barriers to \ knowledge management
David W. De Long and Liam Fahey Executive Overview
Organizational culture is increasingly recognized as a major barrier to leveraging intellectual assets. This article identifies four ways in which culture influences the behaviors central to knowledge creation, sharing, and use. First, culture—and particularly subcultures—shape assumptions about what knowledge is and which knowledge is worth managing. Second, culture defines ihe relationships between individual and organizational knowledge, determining who is expected to control specific knowledge, as well as who must share it and who can hoard it. Third, culture creates the context for social interaction that determines how knowledge will be used in particular situations, fourth, cuifure shapes the processes by which new knowledge—with its accompanying uncertainties—is created, legitimated, and distributed in organizations. These four perspectives suggest specific actions managers can take to assess the different aspects of culture most likely to influence knowledge-related behaviors. This diagnosis is the critical first step in developing a strategy and specific interventions to align the firm's culture in support of more effective knowledge use.
Obviously, there is a set of tools, such as Lotus Notes, intranets, etc., which you need to be knowledge-based. But technology is only 20 percent of the picture. The remaining 80 percent is people. You have to get the culture right. —Roger Chaddock, associate director, Computer Sciences Corporation^ What's happened here is 90 percent culture change. You need to change the way you relate to one another. If you can't do that you won't succeed.2 —Bob Buckman, CEO of Buckman Labs As we roll out our knowledge system, we find we lack a culture that supports collaborative work because people view knowledge as a method of securing their job. So they're
Diagnosing cultural barriers to \ knowledge management
David W. De Long and Liam Fahey Executive Overview
Organizational culture is increasingly recognized as a major barrier to leveraging intellectual assets. This article identifies four ways in which culture influences the behaviors central to knowledge creation, sharing, and use. First, culture—and particularly subcultures—shape assumptions about what knowledge is and which knowledge is worth managing. Second, culture defines ihe relationships between individual and organizational knowledge, determining who is expected to control specific knowledge, as well as who must share it and who can hoard it. Third, culture creates the context for social interaction that determines how knowledge will be used in particular situations, fourth, cuifure shapes the processes by which new knowledge—with its accompanying uncertainties—is created, legitimated, and distributed in organizations. These four perspectives suggest specific actions managers can take to assess the different aspects of culture most likely to influence knowledge-related behaviors. This diagnosis is the critical first step in developing a strategy and specific interventions to align the firm's culture in support of more effective knowledge use.
Obviously, there is a set of tools, such as Lotus Notes, intranets, etc., which you need to be knowledge-based. But technology is only 20 percent of the picture. The remaining 80 percent is people. You have to get the culture right. —Roger Chaddock, associate director, Computer Sciences Corporation^ What's happened here is 90 percent culture change. You need to change the way you relate to one another. If you can't do that you won't succeed.2 —Bob Buckman, CEO of Buckman Labs As we roll out our knowledge system, we find we lack a culture that supports collaborative work because people view knowledge as a method of securing their job. So they're