The strategies of knowledge sharing across culture

July 4, 2008 · Filed Under Knowledge management (KM) 

This article also appears in re-imaginary

The globalization issue and ICT development make some organization expand their business globally. The implementation of the ICT can solve the time and boundaries problem. One organization can communicate to the other organization easily, and the staff can work telecommuting from their home. A global organization may have headquarter in Melbourne, the administrative in Tokyo, and marketing in South Africa, this is just because they want to reach as many markets as they can. The organization not only employs Australian people but people around the world, with different language, different culture, and different experience. Another example is Monash University in Australia has branches in Malaysia, South Africa, and Italia. Australia as a country with western culture while Malaysia is eastern culture brings many differences. 
Since the main organization should share their knowledge to the whole branches organization which is have different language, culture, and custom. In my point of view, knowledge sharing among different culture is very difficult and the most challenging for a manager in an organisation. The obvious example is during the lecture, many students are international student with non English speaking language when the lecturer is English speaking. This problem can influence the knowledge sharing quality, some student may only receive less than the lecturer expected. This also happen while delivering the organization task instruction from the main organization to the other branches, there some difficulties to interpret the task. Main organization cannot treat their branches same as they do because the branches’ staff have different culture, language, and experience. For Australian organization may apply open (western centric) knowledge sharing but Malaysia branches may more closed and shy to share their knowledge (not to share centric),(Chowdhury,2006), so the manager cannot apply the same system to encourage knowledge sharing among the staff.
The purpose of knowledge sharing is to gain the individual knowledge and use it as organization assets. Knowledge sharing could be everywhere and by everyone. Everywhere meaning there is no boundaries of time and place. However culture can be a barrier in knowledge sharing process. (Li & Scullion,2006). A manager should aware of this condition because a manager should make sure that knowledge sharing succeeds. According to Yamazaki & Kayes, 2004 in Kayes, Kayes & Yamazaki, 2005 the seven cross cultural learning competencies that helps a manager to share knowledge across culture are:
1. Valuing different.
2. Building relationship in the host.
3. Listening and observing. 
4. Coping with.
5. Translating complex.
6. Taking action
7. Managing others (Kayes et.al.,2005).
Ellis in her article ‘Sharing best practice’ states that the organization should ensure that the all organization location (branches) has the same access to follow the instruction and uniform procedures.(Ellis,2001). This indicates that wherever the branches of organization is held they should get the same information and knowledge with the main organization.
Understanding a new culture and custom is a key to knowledge sharing across culture. Through the culture we learn people’s characteristic and diversity. The way people share their knowledge is very different, it depends on their experience and culture. Many organizations are going global and gain success because they learn the host culture. 

References:
Chowdhury, N.,(2006). Knowledge management in Malaysia—why sow adaption?. Knowledge Board. Retrieved April 23, 2007 from World Wide Web http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/2643

Ellis, K,(2001). Sharing best practice. Training, 38(7):32-38 

Kayes A.B., Kayes D.C., Yamazaki Y.(2005). Transferring knowledge across cultures: a learning competencies approach. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 18(4) pp.87-100 

Lehaney B, [et al].(2003). Beyond knowledge management. Idea Group Publishing, London.

Li, S., Scullion, H.,(2006). Bridging the distance: managing cross-border knowledge holders. Asia Pacific J Manage. Retrieved April 23, 2007 from World Wide Web http://www.springerlink.com/content/
63m17w01r628nq52/fulltext.pdf

Tags: , ,

Comments

Leave a Reply