| Lately many companies have invested huge amounts of time and money into knowledge management systems. Research would suggest that one critical factor for the success of such systems is the culture of sharing knowledge (Davenport et al. 1998) as only those people who are willing to share their knowledge, will transfer their knowledge through-knowledge management systems.;Nobody has yet looked in detail at those aspects of organisational culture that influence the sharing of explicit and tacit knowledge. This has been done in this thesis. From the research in the areas of organisational culture, knowledge management, and intraorganisational trust five factors have been identified that influence the construct "culture of sharing knowledge." These five factors are: openness, trust, availability and use of communication channels, top management support of knowledge sharing, and a reward system linked to the sharing of knowledge.;To research these factors of organisational culture a case study approach was used to examine the culture of knowledge sharing in the R&D department of a high-tech firm. Twenty-nine person in-depth interviews were conducted. The response frequencies to the 52 questions were counted and the answers were analysed for between group differences (years of service and job type).;The results suggest that there does exist an ideal of a culture that truly supports the sharing of knowledge. Furthermore, all of the five factors included in this study appear to influence the sharing. The reward system in the organisation appears to be a key component of a culture which supports the sharing of knowledge. The results indicated that a reward system that supports the sharing of knowledge should be designed to reward openness especially from experts, through recognition from peers and formal acknowledgement through peers. As a consequence organisations should focus on understanding and supporting the 'culture' that supports the sharing of knowledge rather than the technology that allows sharing (i.e. focus on people not system). |
