Knowledge Sharing in Organizations:

Knowledge Sharing in Organizations:

The Role of Communities

Discussion

Evaluation and other perspectives

• Is there enough knowledge sharing in our society?
• How can individual interests be a good thing?
• How care can influence your knowledge sharing in your every day life?
• What can make you share your knowledge?
• If a community is working well, is management then necessary?

George von Krogh, 2011

Critical awareness

Group efficacy and group identification

• Both proposed solutions seems to create as many problems as they solve
• The use of ICT is barely discussed
• Is the concept of a well-working communal resource utopia?

• An attempt to solve the paradox of the importance of collective action against a situation of collective disadvantage
• Empirical study: Results showed that the group where the collective action effects would be higher was more keen on grouping up in order to face the increase of the payment

Discuss the question in pairs

Knowledge

as acquisition or participation?

If a community is working well, is management then necessary?

Anna Sfard (1998): On the two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one

Raises questions for critical reflection:

• Can a person possess knowledge or is knowledge only existing in specific contexts (relations)?
• Communities can be great for sharing tacit knowledge, but what does that mean for content?

3 main take-aways

How does

agency work?

• Goal: Encourage knowledge sharing through agency
• Step 1: Management (agency) sets goal and strategy for knowledge sharing
• Step 2: A possible strategy is to create an organisational structure that encourages employees to share knowledge
• E.g. Setting up weekly meetings for problem-solving
• Step 3: If this is not working, incentives can be introduced
• E.g. Economic incentives for sharing knowledge

Communities and communal resources

Possibilities

and problems

Knowledge sharing

in communities

Communities:

• People form social bonds trough shared norms, traditions, identity and solidarity
• Communities as contrast to societies that are shaped by individualism, competition and self-interest

Communal resources:

• Communities can be seen as resources in

knowledge sharing

• Not all communities are enhancing knowledge sharing

Possiblities:

• Can be used moderately or largely dependent on the case

Problems:

• Structural solutions are often not working
• Incentives are often not working
• Sharing tacit knowledge requires intrinsic motivation
• What incentives to choose?

Solution 1: Agency in Knowledge Sharing

• Communities lowers cost of searching, bargaining and monitoring
• Knowledge sharing without agency
• Individual interests still exists
• Knowledge sharing will not take place in all communities
• Three conditions: Opportunity structures, care and authenticity

Opportunity structures

• The benefits of sharing knowledge in the community
• Possibilities for sharing knowledge

Care

• Members create and enforce social norms
• Care is a social norm
• Implies trust, empathy, access to help

• Care can be in the form of information or knowledge

Discuss the

question in pairs

How does care influence your knowledge sharing in your every day life?

Authenticity

Possibilities

and problems

• Legitimate knowledge is shared directly
• Aim: To ensure genuineness, accuracy, validity and reliability
• Cues on who to trust in which situations
• Helps ensure that the 'best' knowledge and best practices are being shared

What is agency?

Possibilities:

• Knowledge sharing without agency
• Implicit mechanisms for 'selection' of the knowledge and practices to be shared

Problems:

• Not all communities are communal resources
• Conditions of possibility structures, care and authenticity must be met
• Individual interests are still present
• Further research is needed

• Enforces cooperation, while outside the process
• Focuses on structural solutions to enable knowledge sharing
• Building an organisational structure that exposes employees to different projects, tasks and people
• Research suggests that this is not a very reliable solution
• Use of incentives to encourage knowledge sharing - but which incentives?

Solution 2: Communities as communal resources

Discuss the question in pairs

What can make you share your knowledge?

Draw on your experience as a student

1. Knowledge sharing is often not a matter of simple information communication from a knowledge giver to a knowledge receiver

2. The use of agency is often not a very effective solution; structural changes cannot solve most knowledge sharing problems

3. The use of communities for knowledge sharing may be the best solution; the effect is dependent on several factors, some of which should be researched further

Research question and purpose

Why, and under what circumstances, people share knowledge in organizations?

Why is knowledge

sharing a problem?

Discuss the question in pairs

Article Analysis - Group Project

Learning and Knowledge Management - July 21

Miguel Lopes - Gonçalo Rietsch Monteiro - Marianne Melsen

How can individual interests be a good thing?

Research on knowledge management:

• Primarily focused on the 'how' of knowledge sharing
• Tools and techniques for sharing knowledge
• Optimising knowledge sharing in organisations

This leaves the 'why' unanswered

• Sharing tacit knowledge
• Apprentice training
• Individual interests
• The goals of the employees may be different from the goals of the organisation
• The problem of free-riding

Discuss the

question in pairs

Is there enough knowledge sharing in our society?

What is knowledge?

1. Knowledge is a function of our justified true beliefs

2. Knowledge enables action

3. Knowledge can be implicit or explicit

The roots of the article