The study presented in the journal ‘Cultural influences on knowledge sharing
Through online communities of practice’ (Ardichvilli et al. 2006), seeks to address three key questions:
- How differences in cultural values affect the way employee’s access and share professional information.
- What are the employee’s views on knowledge seeking and sharing?
- Finally, what are the cultural barriers to knowledge seeking and sharing?
Knowledge seeking and sharing
Communities of practice as a way of disseminating knowledge and ensuring continuity of an organization or corporation have been well expounded on.
Knowledge as the authors believe is quite difficult to ape and it is vital that for an organization to ensure that the skill they have cultivated in their employees do not disappear with the employee’s retirement or resignation.
Such skills as it has been found out are best disseminated through sharing experiences and storytelling between the experienced and the less skilled and inexperienced employees. It is on this basis that the authors advocate for online collaborative communication technologies whereby different employees can interact with each other and share ideas and experiences.
This is indeed an excellent way to maintain communication between the employees and it is fast becoming very popular with corporations. While this may be an excellent idea it does come with its pitfalls and the biggest one of them would be the employee’s pride (Ardichvilli et al. 2006).
Some employees would not like to ask questions and reveal their ignorance to others. This is where the issue of culture is prevalent. In some cultures, upholding of one’s pride is held in the highest regard (e.g. the Japanese) and this is where the community practice program might very well fail miserably.
Also, some employees might view the idea of asking questions as a management system of seeking out the less skilled and finding their replacements.
Individualism
Ardichvilli et al. (2006) note that the level of individualism was different across all three cultures and that it affected the workplace relationships and knowledge sharing.
In cultures where the individual is glorified and elevated for example in America, above the group then workers tended to rely more on written communication like e-mail and they tend to put their career and personal goals ahead of the goals of the group.
In cultures where the good of the group is put ahead of any personal aspirations like China, Russia and Brazil, the workers tended to rely more on information from the environment and personal forms of communication like face to face meetings, phone calls and non-verbal cues.
This affects knowledge sharing in that, individualistic employees tend to share information if they think it will help advance their prospects and they find it easier to share information with others outside their groupings as they did not have a profound sense of loyalty to the group (Luo & Shenkar 2006).
The less individualistic cultures however share information freely with members of their own groupings and found it more difficult to share the same information outside of their groupings.
Cultural barriers
Oosthuizen (2004, p. 61) says that marketing in different cultures and societies is either speaking in tongues or enlightening the world. This statement will obviously be very offensive to cultures with a strong Christian background.
Christians believe that speaking in tongues is a gift from the Holy Spirit and so relating a gift from God to marketing products will be tantamount to blasphemy. The author is obviously does not have a Christian background and is not very sensitive to the values and culture of this religion.
As a manager working with a valuable employee who is culture insensitive I would take my time to understand such an individual. I would invest some time and material in trying to sensitize the employee through seminars and maybe even spend time with others of a different culture so that he/she may gain an understanding of others.
The author is most likely from an individualistic society and this is evident in his work as he does not place any emphasis on teamwork or grouping and tends to view cultures on an individual level.
Language
Marketing the same product to different cultures across the globe is not very easy as (Oosthuizen 2004, p. 12) observes. A successful campaign in one country or region may not necessarily take off in another region.
Even translating into the local language in most instances will not help as the meaning in the humor, or creativity of the advertisement will most likely be lost.
In fact, the author insists that brands with global success owe it more to the human nature whereby they want to be associated with internationally marketed products which are considered prestigious.
The author sees this diversity in human culture as an asset. Creativity is the key ingredient in marketing and thinking outside the box is much easier if one experiences a different culture and this is what the author is advocating for.
References
Ardichvilli, A., Maurer, M., Li, W., Wentling, T. & Stuedemann, R., 2006. Cultural influences on knowledge sharing through online communities of practice. Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(1), pp.94-107.
Luo, Y. & Shenkar, O., 2006. The multinational corporation as a multilingual community: language and organization in a global context. Journal of International Business Studies, 37(3), pp.321-339.
Oosthuizen, T., 2004. In marketing across cultures: are you enlightening the world or are you speaking in tongues? Design Issues, 20(2), pp.61-72.