Steve Barth | Reflexions

Managing Knowledge across Borders

A recent discussion at The Braintrust Knowledge Management Group asked how cultural dimensions affect learning and knowledge sharing. I really like Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars' book "Building Cross-Cultural Competence" as a basis for understanding the challenges and opportunities you face and Hall's "Values Technology" approach to leveraging the differences.

This issue is further complicated, complexified and/or mitigated by the uniqueness of organizational, professional and departmental cultures—and don't forget that there are often nested subcultures to these as well. For example, Japanese are said to have a very unique and cohesive culture that permeates their corporate behaviors. However, when I studied Japanese corporations invested in the US, I found huge differences between, say, Hitachi, Ricoh, Toyota and Seiko. I also found every site and subsidiary had unique attributes based on the character of the managers, the local staff, the region, etc., as all these agents and communities "co-evolve."

I used to write extensively about such issues in global business and focused on the KM angle in a 1999 article for Knowledge Management magazine called "Managing Knowledge Across Borders," which I will repost here.

My Original PKM Article

In December 2000, I published "The Power of One" as the cover story in Knowledge Management Magazine. Although a number of people were already combining the three words, the article was one of the first widespread mentions of the idea of "personal" knowledge management.

It seems obvious, but it is not often said that knowledge management works best when knowledge workers take the initiative and responsibility for what they know, don't know and need to know. Doing so not only makes the individual more valuable to the corporation, it also enhances the value of intellectual capital for the corporation.

The original article is reprinted HERE. Many of my subsequent articles, columns and book chapters on PKM are HERE, along with a reading list of useful material by others.