Cultivating the social foundations of the collective-minded organization
by: Chris Valenti

Imagine an organization where each individual worker is networked together forming a single, unified intelligence. The organization never repeats a mistake or re-invents the wheel and each new challenge is an opportunity to use and contribute to the collective brain. Such an organization would be able to adapt to change like a river to a stone and evolve at the speed of light. Most knowledge management experts would agree that this is the holy grail of the knowledge-sharing organization. It also happens to be the description of Star Trek’s Borg, one of the most feared villains in our popular culture whose mantra, “resistance is futile,” has become a common expression. What makes the Borg, poster children of Knowledge Management, so threatening that we have fashioned them as an archetypal symbol of fear? Could it be that the technological implants in their pale, zombie-like flesh give us creepy visions of a de-humanized future? Perhaps; but more likely it is the concept of an organization with the ability to threaten our individuality and force upon us a collective identity that is abhorrent to our western culture. As fate would have it, the fundamental obstacle organizations must overcome in freeing and capturing knowledge is at once one of the most zealously guarded ideals in our national culture, and therefore often embedded in our organizational cultures. It is the cult of the individual and for Knowledge Management (KM) to be successful in organizations, this cult must be replaced with the more pragmatic ideal of the collective. A study published in The Journal of Management Accounting Research in which Chinese organizations were compared to American ones found that, “Chinese vs. U.S. nationals’ openness of knowledge sharing was related to their different degrees of collectivism as well as whether knowledge sharing involved a conflict between self and collective interests.” (Chow, Deng & Ho, 2000) Collectivism then, equates directly to what is essentially knowledge management’s fulcrum; the practice of knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing does not merely depend on a collective culture to be successful but is in fact, a culture in itself. In this essay, I will define this view of knowledge management, identify a few of the most common barriers organizations may confront when initiating a culture shift, and submit ideas for achieving successful knowledge-sharing through cultivating collective values and norms.
The importance of knowledge management has been well established in the last decade. Its discourse has become common language, while its enabling technologies, once groundbreaking, have become ubiquitous to the point of being mundane. The Houston Texas based APQC found that the technological aspect of KM is barely the tip of the iceberg. “Although technology enables knowledge-sharing processes, there is no guarantee that people will share and use each other’s knowledge. Ultimately, a company’s ability to use knowledge depends on the level of enthusiasm among employees. That enthusiasm–or the lack thereof–can be traced to the organization’s culture.” (Comeau-Kirschner, 2000) It seems a modernization of KM’s basic tenants and a new focus is the order of the day. Rather than emphasizing networking technologies and new email sniffing software, we should be intent on helping organizations to determine what specific knowledge is important and then implementing methods to free that knowledge from the minds of individuals. Technological solutions are worthless until we have determined what knowledge is of value, then devisied ways to liberate it and make it the property of the organization’s collective brain.
The first task, understanding what knowledge is of value and where, within vast circulatory systems, it resides, is formidable work. When one considers the volume of information that organizations now have the capacity to collect, it may seem impossible. As American Productivity and Quality Center President, Carla O’Dell contends, our organizations are “in information, not knowledge, overload. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Helping make sense of all that information, sifting out what is valuable knowledge, then sharing it, is the challenge of knowledge management (Stamps, 1999). Let us narrow the scope then, of what merits our attention before we begin sifting through mountains of data. KM experts tend to classify knowledge into two categories; explicit and tacit; where explicit knowledge is data and facts, and tacit knowledge is “know-how”. The difference between the two is akin the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Visualize a worker confronted with a proverbial wall of information and data. The wall represents explicit knowledge, while the worker, specifically, the area between the worker’s ears, represents tacit knowledge. “Experts estimate that tacit knowledge represents roughly 80 percent of the most important knowledge.” (Stamps, 1999).
This is where the value is to be found, but how to secure it? Research into the concept of social capital has expressed the enigma of tacit knowledge as “intuitive, difficult to express, gained through experience, and shared with others through interaction. Because [it] is embedded, in part, in the psyche and intuition of individuals, it is not readily articulated and resists codification.” (Droege & Hoobler, 2003) This study concluded however, that:
1) Tacit knowledge can be preserved, in part, when firms promote employee interaction, collaboration, and diffusion of non-redundant tacit knowledge.
2) Characteristics of a firm’s social network, including density and an optimal mix of weak and strong ties, promote interaction, collaboration, and non-redundant tacit knowledge diffusion. (Droege & Hoobler, 2003)
Illusive though it may be, tacit knowledge is not beyond the reach of an organization that promotes a collective culture. The most productive view of Knowledge Management is therefore consistent with that of Jerry Ash who, asserts KM “is the practice of managing an organization’s knowledge worker and its knowledge base through leadership in an entirely new environment, [an] open environment, necessary to encourage knowledge sharing and the collaborative pursuit of knowledge.” (Ash, 2001)
We will describe several cultural elements that organizations must confront before the knowledge-worker will likely share their tacit “know how” with colleagues, or rather, their competitors. It is worth noting that the road upon which we are about to embark is a delicate one, fraught with peril for the tenderfoot. Carla O’Dell warns, “that transferring best practices is not like transplanting a begonia. It’s more like an organ transplant, often rejected by the immune system. In companies, the immune system is the culture, and if the culture is not receptive, best practices, however good, will be rejected.” (Stamps, 1999) This should come as little surprise since culture is, after all, a deep-seated vessel housing philosophical world-views that comprise the very foundations of the paradigms through which a social group interprets the world. Jerry Ash highlights two major roadblocks to knowledge sharing as a “misunderstanding about what Knowledge Management is, and [the] resistance to cultural change.” (Ash, 2001) A prudent first step then, should be a systematic audit of the organization’s culture. This culture audit will attempt to unearth areas that typically reflect and perpetuate an organization’s internal paradigms such as: the measure of power-distance in the reporting structure, its inherent predispositions towards intra-personal trust, the degree to which there exists a sense of common purpose, and the logic and integrity of its reward systems.
The first obstacle we will consider in more detail is that of the power structure. The measure of power-distance found in an organization is important with regards to successful knowledge sharing, because an authority structure that is too stringent may serve to stifle a cooperative and trusting environment. An MIT Knowledge Management text simply states that, “to the extent that organizations de-emphasize status distinctions, there is likely to be more sharing of
Expertise.” (Ackerman, Pipek & Wulf, 2003, p. PG 20) When the traditional top-down culture is at its strongest, the resulting value system is one that puts less stock in ideas originating from the lower levels. Naturally, this system imparts a sense of fear onto the knowledge worker who subsequently, is reluctant to risk the humiliation of sharing a weak idea. Organizations must transform top-down power structures into a more egalitarian system. Ways to accomplish this are intimately entwined with the next obstacle we shall discuss, that of trust.
Trust is the source of the knowledge worker’s intrinsic motivation to share tacit knowledge and is perhaps the most important of all cultural elements inherent in a knowledge-sharing atmosphere. In individualist environments, a knowledge worker will be protective of experiential wisdom for two reasons. The first invokes the “knowledge is power” adage; they perceive that such knowledge guarantees their value to the firm and their subsequent job security. Second, they believe that sharing such wisdom would give their colleagues a competitive edge against them in their struggle towards the mutual goal, reaching the same status rung on the corporate ladder. A knowledge worker will share knowledge only under the most selective of circumstances. These circumstances are the norm in a collective culture.
As we discussed, providing an environment for trust involves a low power-distance, but it also involves a strong common sense of purpose. A study on the transfer of tacit knowledge published in the Journal of International Business Studies concluded that “relational embeddedness improves the transfer of tacit knowledge consistent with Uzzi, who states that shared equity is viewed as a deepening of trust and of risk-sharing (Dhanaraj, Lyles, Steensma & Tihanyi, 2004) The idea of “relational embeddeness” here, is important. The Droege & Hoobler study referred to earlier, underscores this with their findings that “as relationships become embedded in social structures, trust develops, promoting norms of reciprocity. Reciprocity norms, together with interpersonal trust, create conditions that enhance knowledge sharing. Because the sharing of tacit knowledge requires high levels of individual interaction through reciprocity exchange relationships, it is advantageous that individual relationships be strongly embedded within a firm’s social structure (Droege & Hoobler, 2003)
Creating common purpose and encouraging shared characteristics should be infused in organizations at all levels, from the corporate vision to the smallest teams. Better yet, such a philosophy should be the impetuous to the formation and encouragement of Communities of Practice. COPs, being grass roots teams, are knowledge-sharing incubators since its members elect to be affiliated with the group. As we can see, while the idea of common purpose in creating a knowledge-sharing collective culture may seem like common sense; it should not be underestimated. The Surprising reality however, is that “team work” and “shared goals” are usually no more than empty organizational rhetoric.
It is not enough to profess belief in these tenants, since they will not be effective unless they are supported in the organizations reward structure. The reward system is in fact the backbone because it is rewards that effect individual behavior. Consider for a moment, the following example of the reward system in a Soviet era gulag. Glen Gray’s academic memoir on men in combat, imparts that, “German soldiers who endured Russian prisoner-of-war camps in the decade after World War II have described convincingly how the Communist system succeeded in destroying any sense of comradeship among prisoners simply by making the results of individual labor the basis of food allotments. Under a system like this, men can not only eat their fill but also enjoy superfluity without any concern for a mate who may slowly be starving to death.” (Gray, 1959, p. PG 41) The Soviets were attempting to ensure a task-based individual output while suppressing and minimizing the dangers of a unified revolt. The German soldiers quickly learned that they could guarantee their individual survival and well being by producing the required output. They further understood that helping a fellow prisoner would come at the sacrifice of potential comforts had they instead worked to their personal benefit. The gulags were a microcosm of our Western culture and in many ways reflect the value systems inherent in our western organizational cultures. Few organizations believe they are anti-teamwork, but an audit of the organization’s reward systems can prove revealing.
Studies have proven that an effective reward system can induce collective organizational behavior in an otherwise individualist national culture. Chow’s national culture study for instance, concluded that, “individuals are responsive to the company’s performance-evaluation and reward system [so] developing a supportive company culture may be more effective in an individualist culture (Chow et al., 2000). By equally rewarding team members for group success and rewarding individuals based on the merit of their individual contributions to the group, organizations can forge a model collective within the compounds of a thriving, strongly individualist national culture.
Once again, the basis of successful knowledge management, does not necessarily require a culture change, it is a culture. We have discussed several of the most significant aspects of culture that organizations can control in an effort to cultivate such an environment, all of which are decisively low-tech. Though the Borg used exotic technologies to produce a collective mind, our organizations can capture their inherent tacit knowledge through the use of common technologies coupled with the proper social structure. Rachel Robbins best summarizes this idea in Harnessing ‘Group Memory’ to Build a Knowledge-Sharing Culture, where she writes “Absent the old vested sense of collective benefit, no knowledge-sharing enterprise, however sophisticated the tools, will succeed.” (Robbins, 2003) If organizations are to indeed benefit from their tacit knowledge, they must examine their cultures and make the necessary changes to imbue their workers with this “sense of collective benefit”.

REFERENCES

Ackerman, M., Pipek, V., & Wulf, V. (2003). Sharing Expertise Beyond Knowledge Management. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Ash, J. (2001, Mar). Why Isn’t Knowledge Management Working? Scientific Computing & Instrumentation, 18(6), 61.
Chow, C. W., Deng, J. F., & Ho, J. L. (2000, Annual). The Openness of Knowledge Sharing within Organizations: A Comparative Study of the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Journal of Management Accounting Research, p. 65. This study examines empirically the interaction effects of national culture and contextual factors (nature of the knowledge and the relationship between the knowledge sharer and recipient) on employees’ tendency to share knowledge with coworkers. Quantitative and open-ended responses to two scenarios were collected from 142 managers (104 from the U.S. and 38 from the People’s Republic of China). These two nations were selected due to their divergence on salient aspects of national culture, as well as their global political and economic importance. The focus on interaction effects was aimed at providing a more powerful test of culture’s effects than simple comparisons of means typical of prior related research.
Consistent with culture-based expectation, the quantitative results indicated that Chinese vs. U.S. nationals’ openness of knowledge sharing was related to their different degrees of collectivism–the relative emphasis on self vs. collective interests–as well as whether knowledge sharing involved a conflict between self and collective interests. Also consistent with prediction, Chinese relative to U.S. nationals shared knowledge significantly less with a potential recipient who was not a member of their “ingroup.” Content analysis of the open-ended responses further showed that the quantitative results are the aggregated outcomes of trade-offs across cultural attributes and their interactions with contextual factors.
Comeau-Kirschner, C. (2000, Jan). The Sharing Culture [American Management Association]. Management Review (American Management Association), 8.
Dhanaraj, C., Lyles, m. A., Steensma, H. K., & Tihanyi, L. (2004, Sept). Managing tacit and explicit knowledge transfer in IJVs: The role of relational embeddedness and the impact on performance. Journal of International Business Studies, 35(5), 248(15). Drawing on organizational learning and economic sociology, we address how relational embeddedness between the foreign parent and international joint venture (IJV) managers influences the type of knowledge (i.e., tacit and explicit) transferred to the IJV, and how the importance of relational embeddedness varies between young and mature IJVs. We also examine the influence of tacit and explicit knowledge on IJV performance. Our results show the importance that tie strength, trust, and shared values and systems play in the transfer of tacit knowledge, especially for mature IJVs. Our findings are consistent with Uzzi’s tenets: tacit learning is accumulative, assists in explaining explicit knowledge, and is enhanced by social embeddedness. We also find that the influence of transferred tacit knowledge on IJV performance stems principally from its indirect effect on the learning of explicit knowledge.
Droege, S. B., & Hoobler, J. M. (2003, Spring). Employee turnover and tacit knowledge diffusion: A network perspective. Journal of Managerial Issues, 15(1), 50(16). Previous research has addressed the negative impact of employee turnover on human and social capital. We add to this literature by calling attention to how employee turnover erodes tacit knowledge and underscore our study by drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm (e.g., Grant, 1996). We employ a social network framework to propose that characteristics of a firm’s social structure determine the degree of tacit knowledge loss upon employee exit. Specifically, we posit that the diffusion of tacit knowledge is positively related to the degree of employee interaction, collaboration, and access to non-redundant information.
Gray, J. G. (1959, 04/11/27). The Warriors, Reflections on Men in Battle. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Robbins, R. F. (2003, June). Harnessing “Group Memory” to Build a Knowledge-Sharing Culture. Of Councel, 22(6), 7(5).
Stamps, D. (1999, March). Is Knowledge Management a Fad? Training, 36(3), 36. American Productivity and Quality Center Pres Carla O’Dell contends that information can only be considered knowledge if it is acted on. She says that a number of organizations have missed opportunities not because they lacked knowledge, but because they failed to act on what they knew. She further argues that organizations tend to stick to established paradigms about what they believe is happening in the world and use only the information that fits into their frame of reference. They tend to resist information that is new or inconsistent with their set paradigms. O’Dell expounds on the issue of how organizations can take advantage of their collective knowledge in her book ‘If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice.’

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackerman, M., Pipek, V., & Wulf, V. (2003). Sharing Expertise Beyond Knowledge Management. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Ash, J. (2001, March). Building a Knowledge Sharing Culture. Retrieved from http://www.knowledgepoint.com.au/intellectual_capital/Articles/IC_JA001.htm. A review of a workshop held in March 2000 for members of the Florida Society of Association Executives (FSAE)
Ash, J. (2001, Mar). Why Isn’t Knowledge Management Working? Scientific Computing & Instrumentation, 18(6), 61.
Barth, S. (2004, July). Defining Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.destinationcrm.com.
Bergeron, B. (2003). Essentials of Knowledge Management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Bryant, W. (2003, 1/6). The Worldview Dimensions of Individualism and Collectivism: Implications for Counseling. Journal of Counceling and Development, 81(Summer), 370 (5).
Chow, C. W., Deng, J. F., & Ho, J. L. (2000, Annual). The Openness of Knowledge Sharing within Organizations: A Comparative Study of the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Journal of Management Accounting Research, p. 65. This study examines empirically the interaction effects of national culture and contextual factors (nature of the knowledge and the relationship between the knowledge sharer and recipient) on employees’ tendency to share knowledge with coworkers. Quantitative and open-ended responses to two scenarios were collected from 142 managers (104 from the U.S. and 38 from the People’s Republic of China). These two nations were selected due to their divergence on salient aspects of national culture, as well as their global political and economic importance. The focus on interaction effects was aimed at providing a more powerful test of culture’s effects than simple comparisons of means typical of prior related research.
Consistent with culture-based expectation, the quantitative results indicated that Chinese vs. U.S. nationals’ openness of knowledge sharing was related to their different degrees of collectivism–the relative emphasis on self vs. collective interests–as well as whether knowledge sharing involved a conflict between self and collective interests. Also consistent with prediction, Chinese relative to U.S. nationals shared knowledge significantly less with a potential recipient who was not a member of their “ingroup.” Content analysis of the open-ended responses further showed that the quantitative results are the aggregated outcomes of trade-offs across cultural attributes and their interactions with contextual factors.
Comeau-Kirschner, C. (2000, Jan). The Sharing Culture [American Management Association]. Management Review (American Management Association), 8.
Dhanaraj, C., Lyles, m. A., Steensma, H. K., & Tihanyi, L. (2004, Sept). Managing tacit and explicit knowledge transfer in IJVs: The role of relational embeddedness and the impact on performance. Journal of International Business Studies, 35(5), 248(15). Drawing on organizational learning and economic sociology, we address how relational embeddedness between the foreign parent and international joint venture (IJV) managers influences the type of knowledge (i.e., tacit and explicit) transferred to the IJV, and how the importance of relational embeddedness varies between young and mature IJVs. We also examine the influence of tacit and explicit knowledge on IJV performance. Our results show the importance that tie strength, trust, and shared values and systems play in the transfer of tacit knowledge, especially for mature IJVs. Our findings are consistent with Uzzi’s tenets: tacit learning is accumulative, assists in explaining explicit knowledge, and is enhanced by social embeddedness. We also find that the influence of transferred tacit knowledge on IJV performance stems principally from its indirect effect on the learning of explicit knowledge.
Droege, S. B., & Hoobler, J. M. (2003, Spring). Employee turnover and tacit knowledge diffusion: A network perspective. Journal of Managerial Issues, 15(1), 50(16). Previous research has addressed the negative impact of employee turnover on human and social capital. We add to this literature by calling attention to how employee turnover erodes tacit knowledge and underscore our study by drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm (e.g., Grant, 1996). We employ a social network framework to propose that characteristics of a firm’s social structure determine the degree of tacit knowledge loss upon employee exit. Specifically, we posit that the diffusion of tacit knowledge is positively related to the degree of employee interaction, collaboration, and access to non-redundant information.
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Ingram, P., & Tal Simons. (2002, Dec). The transfer of experience in groups of organizations: Implications for performance and competition. Management Science, 48(12), 1517(17). Groups of organizations are pervasive, although there is little systematic knowledge about how they affect their members. We examine one dimension of the operation of organization groups, the transfer of experience. Our core argument is that organization groups may create benefits for their members, but problems for those outside the group. Within the group they can facilitate the transfer of experience among their members by creating mechanisms for communication, incentives for helping, and by promoting understanding. The predicted pattern of experience transfer should improve performance of those within the group, but also has implications for those outside it. Experience accumulated in one organization group strengthens the competitiveness of its organizations, and thereby harms competitors outside the group. Thus, organization groups are fundamental both for the functioning of their members and the competitive dynamics of their industries. Our longitudinal analysis of the profitability of kibbutz agricult ure supports both these claims. Between 1954 and 1965 (the years of this study), almost all kibbutzim were part of organization groups. Kibbutzim became more profitable as a function of the experience of others in their group. Their profitability was reduced, however, as a function of experience of others outside their group.
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Simmons, A. (2001). The Story Factor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing.
Skyrme, D. J. (2000, October). The 3Cs of Knowledge Sharing: Culture, Co-opetition, and Commitment. Knowledge Management Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.kmmag.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=778.
Stamps, D. (1999, March). Is Knowledge Management a Fad? Training, 36(3), 36. American Productivity and Quality Center Pres Carla O’Dell contends that information can only be considered knowledge if it is acted on. She says that a number of organizations have missed opportunities not because they lacked knowledge, but because they failed to act on what they knew. She further argues that organizations tend to stick to established paradigms about what they believe is happening in the world and use only the information that fits into their frame of reference. They tend to resist information that is new or inconsistent with their set paradigms. O’Dell expounds on the issue of how organizations can take advantage of their collective knowledge in her book ‘If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice.’
Thomas-Hunt, M. C., Ogden, T. Y., & Neale Margaret A. (2003, April). Who’s really sharing? Effects of social and expert status on knowledge exchange within groups. Management Science, 49(4), p.464 (14). This study investigated the effects of social status and perceived expertise on the emphasis of unique and shared knowledge within functionally heterogeneous groups. While perceived expertise did not increase the individual’s emphasis of their own unique knowledge, perceived experts were more likely than nonexperts to emphasize shared knowledge and other member’s unique knowledge contributions. Additionally, socially isolated members participated more in discussions and emphasized more of their unique knowledge than did socially connected members. While unique knowledge contributions increased the positive perception of social isolates, similar unique knowledge contributions decreased the positive perception of socially connected members. Finally, socially connected group members gave greater attention to the unique knowledge contributions of the socially isolated member than to the contributions of their socially connected other, but more favorably evaluated members to whom they were more favorably connected than those to whom they were not. We discuss the implications of our findings for managing knowledge exchange within diverse groups.
Tiwana, A. (1999). Knowledge Management Toolkit. Prentice Hall PTR.
Van Buren, M. E. (1999, May). A yardstick for knowledge management. Training & Development, 53(5), 71(5). Abstract: The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) Effective Knowledge Management Working Group is developing standards for the measurement and management of intellectual capital. A joint effort of the ASTD and seven pioneer companies, the Intellectual Capital Management Model is a useful tool for the appraisal of knowledge management activities in different types of organizations. This framework has two sets of measures. The first is composed of measures for identifying the intellectual capital stocks shared by organizations while the other is comprised of measures of financial performance for determining effectiveness. It may take years before these standards are finalized but the stage is set for the next phase, the collection of data on core intelligence capital and financial measures to empirically validate the benchmarks.