This issue of Knowledge Management Research & Practice (KMRP) has a strong emphasis on various topics related to knowledge sharing: including issues arising across different cultures, trust and the operation of communities of practice. Four of the five regular papers address these areas, while the fifth covers the equally important managerial issue of understanding the results of a knowledge audit. The joint message that comes from all five papers is that context is very influential, yet most key aspects of working with knowledge depend crucially on the reactions of the individual.
The first paper is ‘Challenges to Knowledge Sharing across National and Intra-Organizational Boundaries: Case Studies of IKEA and SCA Packaging’ by Anna Jonsson and Thomas Kalling. Jonsson and Kalling examine two different types of boundary that may act as barriers to knowledge sharing – cultural boundaries and structural boundaries. They frame their discussion in terms of three groups of factors: knowledge factors, organisational context and institutional forces. The two cases considered are both multinational corporations headquartered in Sweden. Nevertheless, there are important differences between the two. For example, SCA Packaging has had a major knowledge sharing programme running for 10 years; there is no comparable explicit initiative in IKEA, but knowledge sharing is said to be institutionalised. Also, IKEA has a matrix structure, whereas SCA Packaging does not, and is more decentralised. Among the conclusions that Jonsson and Kalling reach are that motivation is an important but relatively under-researched topic in knowledge management (KM), and that the effect of the different industries between the two cases is relatively minor in comparison with the differences resulting from institutional forces.
The second paper is ‘Ethnicity-Based Cultural Differences in Implicit Managerial Knowledge Usage in Three Australian Organizations’ by Debbie Richards, Peter Busch and Krishna Venkitachalam. Richards et al. consider a specific type of potential cultural boundary within organisations – the effect of differences between the cultures of different ethnic groups. They do this by concentrating on use of implicit managerial knowledge by staff in three different-sized information and communication technology organisations in Australia; one small, one medium and one large. The approach used is a scenario-based questionnaire survey. Two related divisions of the data based on ethnicity were considered: between Anglo-Celtic (no home language other than English) and all others, and between Eastern/Oriental and Western/Occidental backgrounds. Richards et al. use their findings to develop a four-dimensional model comprising 22 cultural characteristics, the dimensions being achievement–ascription, masculinity–femininity, individualism–collectivism, and low context–high context. This provides further evidence of the importance of different cultural backgrounds in an organisation, even within a highly multi-cultural society such as Australia.
Next comes ‘The Impact of Rewards within Communities of Practice: A Study of the SAP Online Global Community’ by Richard Fahey, Ana Vasconcelos and David Ellis. The topic of rewards within KM as a whole is a rather controversial one, with some studies finding that they are effective, some that they are ineffective, and some that they can even be counter-productive! Fahey et al. look specifically at rewards in the context of a virtual community of practice, namely the discussion forums of the online community for the software package SAP. The study, carried out in 2003–2004, is based on participant observation in the forums. It looks especially at the role of tangible rewards in the form of the SAP Community Reward Program, with SAP-branded ‘gifts’ earned by an ‘air miles’ style points allocation system. This was introduced in August 2002, upgraded in 2004 to offer increased rewards, but then withdrawn later that year. This is an unusual context, as almost all previous studies have looked at reward systems operating within, and relating to the knowledge of, a single organisation. Fahey et al. conclude that the scheme had a damaging effect on knowledge exchange, with the replacement of intrinsic motivation by extrinsic motivation. The number of members and the number of visits to the forums increased, but the postings show that the intention of these new members was primarily to earn rewards rather than to exchange knowledge. In this case, the rewards system adopted was evidently not effective.
The fourth paper is ‘Trust as an Antecedent to Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities of Practice’ by Abel Usoro, Mark Sharratt, Eric Tsui and Sandhya Shekhar. Usoro et al. look at a somewhat different situation to the previous paper, in that their study is based on the ‘Systems Thinking Community’ within the multi-national IT organisation Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). This particular virtual community's activities include online courses and workshops, involving the development of simulation models, as well as discussion forums. The paper conceptualises knowledge sharing in terms of three aspects: quantity (frequency), quality (usefulness or value), and focus (the degree to which an individual feels that they engage in knowledge sharing). The model of trust used for analysis is based on the three component factors of competence, benevolence and integrity. Usoro et al. conclude that all three components of trust have a positive relationship with knowledge sharing, and that knowledge sharing focus exhibits the most significant relationship with the trust component factors. Although the contexts are rather different, this is clearly consistent with the findings of the previous paper.
The final regular paper in this issue is ‘The Knowledge Audit: Meta-Matrix Analysis’ by Ronald Dattero, Stuart Galup and Jing Quan. The knowledge audit has become accepted as a vitally important tool for KM practitioners, especially prior to the introduction of a large-scale KM initiative. Dattero et al. address the topic of how to analyse the results of such a KM audit. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is one recognised way to approach this, but has limitations in terms of the number of different types of link between network members that may be taken into account. Dattero et al. present the first use of Meta-Matrix Analysis (previously used in counter-terrorism analysis and organisational design) for understanding the results of a knowledge audit. In its current form, this framework encompasses four types of entity: actors (usually people), knowledge categories, resources and tasks, and therefore allows no fewer than 10 different networks to be recognised and analysed. Dattero et al. present a hypothetical example of the use of Meta-Matrix Analysis for knowledge audit, and argue that other analyses such as SNA may be seen as sub-sets of this approach. KMRP readers would no doubt be very interested to see a full-scale application of this approach.
As well as these regular papers, Heiner Müller-Merbach's series of articles on philosophers and KM this time considers the relationship between generic and particular knowledge. This relationship goes by at least five different names in the philosophy literature, perhaps the best-known expression of it being as the distinction between type and token. Müller-Merbach uses this to draw some lessons about the actual and potential roles of computers in KM. In addition, there is a review of a book by practitioner-turned-academic Mitsuru Kodama.
Whether you are practitioner, academic, both or neither, we trust that there will be something to interest you in this issue of KMRP, and we would be delighted to look forward to receiving your own contribution(s) in the coming months.