Ch9 Knowledge management Jashapara

1. Enabling knowledge contexts
and networks

2. Understanding Organisational Culture and
Climate
• Organisational climate has much older roots in psychology and was
strongly influenced by field theory (Lewin 1948; Lewin 1951).
• In the Lewinian understanding of social environments, the individual
is assumed to be separate from the environment, acting either as a
subject or an agent
• The underlying framework for field theory can be expressed simply
as: B = f(P,E)

3. Understanding Organisational Culture and
Climate
• Organisational climate could be created though various leadership
styles.
• Positivist functionalist paradigm
• Most research in this area has focused on measuring either the
‘psychological climate’ or the ‘organisational climate’
• The weakness in the organisational climate literature has been the
lack of agreement on metrics

4. Understanding Organisational Culture and
Climate
• Organisational climate could be created though various leadership
styles.
• Positivist functionalist paradigm
• Most research in this area has focused on measuring either the
‘psychological climate’ or the ‘organisational climate’
• The weakness in the organisational climate literature has been the
lack of agreement on metrics

5. Understanding Organisational Culture and
Climate
• Study of organisational culture developed from strong
anthropological and sociological roots.
• Geertz’s (1973) interpretative theory of culture

7. Organizational Culture (Denison 1950)
Culture refers to the deep structure of organizations, which is rooted in
the values, beliefs and assumptions held by organizational members.
Meaning is established through socialization to a variety of identity
groups that converge in the workplace. Interaction reproduces a
symbolic world that gives culture both a great stability and a certain
precarious and fragile nature rooted in the dependence of the system
on individual cognition and action.

8. Organizational Climate (Denison 1950)
Climate, in contrast, portrays organisational environments as being
rooted in the organisation’s value system, but tends to present these
social environments in relatively static terms, describing them in terms
of a fixed (and broadly applicable) set of dimensions. Thus, climate is
often considered as temporary, subject to direct control, and largely
limited to those aspects of the social environment that are consciously
perceived by organisational members.’

9. Norms,
Artefacts
and
Symbols

10. Norms
• Expectations of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.
This may be norms about dress code or issues such as expectations
surrounding performance and handling conflict
• They can vary along two dimensions (O’Reilly 1989):
• intensity of approval or disapproval attached to an expectation;
• degree of consistency with which a norm is shared

11. Artefacts
• Artefacts also provide us with shared systems of meaning that
construct organisational life.
• They can exist as material objects, physical layouts, technology,
language and behaviour patterns as well as procedures and practices
in organisations (Brown 1998).
• Material artefacts can exist as company logos and mission
statements.

13. Artefacts (Continued)
• The corporate architecture and identity in terms of appearance and
uniform also provide clues about an organisation’s culture.
• The nature of the building, its external appearance, its internal layout
and furniture can provide signals to organisational members about
how the company values them and their interactions with others.
• Many large organisations commission buildings by renowned
architects to reinforce their identity and show clear signs of
opulence/wealth.

14. Artefacts (Continued)
• Stories are powerful artefacts that tell us about problems and
solutions, disasters and triumphs
• Informal rules and procedures; how things are done around here.
• Indicators of status and the norms of compliance and deviation from rules.
Stories enable organisations to develop their own unique identity.
• Myths are based on unjustified beliefs and recounted as stories. They
serve the purpose of influencing action in particular contexts

15. Artefacts (Continued)
• Ceremonies may include presentations and prizes for high achievers.
Corporate heroes or champions may be celebrated in order to share
their success stories and the values communicated through them.
• Rites may be planned activities such as rites of passage from one role
or status to another.
• Rituals may include company retreats and away days.

16. Symbols
• Symbols can act to reflect aspects of organisational culture, frame
experiences that may be vague or controversial, and mobilise
members to action through their emotional response to a symbol.

17. Values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions
(Cont..)
Organisational values fall into four categories and it is important to avoid
confusion between them (Lencioni 2002):
• Core values are deeply ingrained principles that guide a company’s actions.
• Aspirational values are values to support a new strategy. They are values
that the company needs to compete in the future but currently lacks.
• Permission-to-play values are the minimum behavioural and social
standards required of employees in the organisation.
• Accidental values are values that arise spontaneously over time. They
reflect the common interests or personalities of employees.

18. Values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions
(Cont..)
• Beliefs are what people think is true.
• Values could be considered as enduring beliefs where certain actions
are considered socially more appropriate than others (Rokeach 1973).

19. Values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions
(Cont..)
• Attitudes are a learnt predisposition to act in a favourable or
unfavourable manner to a given circumstance and involve evaluations
based on our feelings.
• Enduring than opinions and have an impact on an individual’s
motivation

20. Values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions
(Cont..)
• Basic assumptions are the taken-for-granted solutions to particular
problems (Brown 1998).
• They are the ‘theories-in-use’ (Argyris and Schon 1978) that
perpetuate organisational routines and single-loop learning

21. Typologies of organisational culture
The Handy typology has
been very influential
among cultural scholars
and suggests four types of
culture (Handy 1985), as
shown in Figure

22. • Another popular
cultural typology is
based on the degree
of risk in company
activities and the
speed of feedback
on actions and
decisions

23. Organizational Culture Inventory®

24. • Constructive norms (styles promoting satisfaction behaviours)
• Achievement: Pursue a standard of excellence
• Self-Actualising: Think in unique and independent ways
• Humanistic-Encouraging: Help others to grow and develop
• Affiliative: Deal with others in a friendly way

25. • Passive/Defensive norms (styles promoting people-security
behaviours)
• Approval: Go along’ with others
• Conventional: Always follow policies and practices
• Dependent: Please those in positions of authority
• Avoidance: Wait for others to act first

26. • Aggressive/Defensive norms (styles promoting task-security behaviours)
• Oppositional: Confrontation and negativism are rewarded. (Point out flaws)
• Power: Reward for taking charge, controlling subordinates and, at the same
time, being responsive to the demands of superiors. (Build up one’s power
base)
• Competitive: Winning is valued and members are rewarded for
outperforming one another. (Turn the job into a contest)
• Perfectionistic: Perfectionism, persistence and hard work are valued. (Do
things perfectly)

27. Creating knowledge-sharing cultures
SECI Model
• Approach to knowledge creation problem
SECI Tacit knowledge converted and amplified by the spiral of
knowledge
• Socialization
• Externalization
• Combination
• Internalization

28. Creating knowledge-sharing cultures
• BA – a shared context and in which knowledge is created, shared and
utilized through interaction
• Originating
• Dialoguing
• Systemizing
• Exercising

30. Socialisation involves sharing tacit knowledge between individuals.
Tacit knowledge is considered as more than ‘know how’ and can
include intuitions, hunches and insights. It is deeply embedded in a
person’s values and beliefs. The space that contributes to socialisation
is ‘Originating Ba’ where individuals share feelings, emotions,
experiences and mental models. The values that support the transfer of
this tacit knowledge are care, love, trust and commitment.

31. Externalisation involves the articulation of tacit into explicit knowledge.
This conversion normally occurs through dialogue and the use of
figurative language, metaphors, narratives, images and creative
inference. The space required to facilitate this knowledge conversion is
‘Interacting Ba’. The main characteristic of this artefact is dialogue
where individuals share their mental models and reflect and analyse
their own understandings.

32. Combination involves conversion of explicit knowledge into more
complex explicit forms. This may arise from capturing, collecting,
sorting, editing and integrating new explicit knowledge. Such
conversions are promoted through ‘Cyber Ba’. These cyber spaces
encourage the documentation of knowledge and the use of databases
and groupware tools

33. Internalisation relies on converting explicit into tacit knowledge. This
usually occurs through experience (learning-by-doing) and training. The
spaces that encourage such conversions are ‘Exercising Ba’,
characterised by reflection through learning, training and mentoring

34. Cultural stickiness: Developing communities of
practice
Approach to cultivating tacit knowledge that moves beyond
organisational artefacts is the notion of ‘communities of practice’
(Brown and Duguid 1991; Lave and Wenger 1991).
‘Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a
set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their
knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing
basis.’

36. Knowledge across
organisational
boundaries