Journal of Information & Knowledge Management, Vol. 1, No.
1 (2002) 4956

c iKMS
Factors Impacting Knowledge Sharing
Lee Chu Keong and Suliman Al-Hawamdeh
Division of Information Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Abstract. Knowledge sharing is the deliberate act in which
knowledge is made reusable through its transfer from one
party to another. It is considered one of the main pillars
of knowledge management. For a knowledge management ini-
tiative to succeed, a knowledge-sharing culture needs to be
created and nurtured within the organisation. Since knowl-
edge is power and no one is willing to give it away freely,
there is a need to create a knowledge-sharing environment
which takes into account the social and economic factors that
inuence knowledge sharing. In this paper, we look at the ex-
isting knowledge-sharing frameworks and propose a new one
that takes into consideration the social and economic issues
that might aect knowledge sharing within the organisation.
The framework attributes the impact to ve factors: the actors
participating in the knowledge-sharing activity, the knowledge
being shared, the channel used, the organisation concerned
and the broader environmental factors. Specic barriers for
each of the ve sources are suggested.
Keywords: Knowledge sharing; Intellectual property.
1. Introduction
It is now widely recognised that in the new economy
knowledge is the most valuable and strategic resource
of any organisation. It is the key ingredient to any
organisations competitive advantage. Traditional eco-
nomic factors of production (land, labour, capital and
entrepreneurship) have now been augmented with knowl-
edge and talent. Porter (1990) argues that, at the level
of the nation, a favourable inheritance like abundant
low-cost labour, mineral deposits and arable land has
become less and less valuable in an increasingly global
economy. Sustained prosperity is governed by produc-
tivity, and depends on the national environment for
competition, which is captured in a framework of in-
formation, incentives, competitive pressures, and access
to supporting institutions such as schools, universities,
E-mail: ascklee@ntu.edu.sg
49
standard-setting agencies, consumer societies, profes-
sional societies, and the judiciary all knowledge, rather
than physical assets.
Drucker (1994) posits that in the knowledge society
the essence of management, the distinctive organ of all or-
ganisations, is to safeguard the performance capacity, if
not the survival, of the organisation by making knowl-
edge productive. He contrasts this with the situation
in the previous century where the management focused
on making manual work productive. Even technology no
longer provides the competitive edge to large corporations
as it once did; for example, mainframes were the preserve
of large corporations. The cost of computing technology,
which fell rapidly, made it possible for even small busi-
nesses to take advantage of IT and challenge the bigger
rivals. Another reason is that because technology is ex-
plicit and tangible, it is the most replicable part of an
organisations assets. While Intel spent US$ 1 billion,
and took more than a year, to create its 486 microproces-
sor, Cyrix was able to clone it for US$ 10 million in 18
months (Weber, 1998).
Respondents to a survey conducted by Ernst &
Young in 1997 identied the following types of knowl-
edge knowledge about customers, knowledge about
best practices and eective processes, knowledge about
the companys own competencies and capabilities, knowl-
edge about the companys own products and services,
knowledge about the emerging market trends, and knowl-
edge about competitors. Shih (2000) includes EQ and IQ
as falling within the notion of knowledge. The most valu-
able knowledge resides, ferments and grows in the mind
as this knowledge, being embedded in people, is the least
imitable. Knowledge management has become one of the
trendiest topics in management circles, and a whole new
consulting industry has emerged around it, trumpeting it
50 C. K. Lee and S. Al-Hawamdeh
as the new business model that will help companies to
utilise on the knowledge within the organisation.
Many terms have come to be used for knowledge
sharing, among them, knowledge transfer, dissemination,
exchange and distribution. Dening knowledge sharing as
the deliberate act in which knowledge is made reusable
for one party through its transfer by another places more
emphasis on the knowledge transfer process. The trans-
fer typically transcends geographical distance, and time.
It may be unidirectional (or largely so) or bi-directional,
vertical (between superior and subordinate) or horizontal.
Increasingly, knowledge sharing will take place with peo-
ple outside the organisations with customers, suppli-
ers, strategic alliance partners, collaborators, regulators,
etc. Knowledge transfer can take many forms. It can be
in the form writing books or research papers. Natarajan
and Shekhar (2000) in their book, Knowledge Manage-
ment: Enabling Business Growth, state that the irre-
sistible urge to share knowledge propelled them to write
the book. Knowledge transfer can occur while deliver-
ing a lecture or making a speech or presentation. One
example is the State of the Union Address. The US
Constitution requires the President to update (read as
share knowledge with) the Congress on the State of
the Union. Many countries have their own State of the
Nation Address delivered by their heads of states for the
same purpose.
Participating in a dialogue over coee or lunch. Xe-
roxs technical reps repairmen swap war stories ed knowledge. This can be seen in the 97-hour opera-
about malfunctioning copiers and these outstrip docu-
mentation and classroom instruction. In the process of
telling and analysing such stories, the reps both feed into
and draw on the groups collective knowledge. Storytell-
ing is useful in preserving the organisational memory, and
can be used to convey values, build espirit de corps, create
role models, reveal how things work around the organi-
sation, and communicate complex ideas (Stewart, 1998).
Participating in a Community of Practice (CoP).
These are informal, ad hoc, spontaneous groups of people
who voluntarily share similar interests and goals. CoPs
enable an organisation to tap into knowledge that is gen-
erated and held collectively.
Collaborating in a research eort culminating in the
writing of a joint paper. Price (1963) reported that
such collaborative work had been increasing steadily and
rapidly since the beginning of the 20th century, as in-
dicated by the proliferation of multi-author papers. He
also noted that in physics, collaborative works exceeded
single-author papers (Price, 1961).
As knowledge represents power, knowledge sharing is
an unnatural act in most organisations. With the recog-
nition that knowledge is a valuable resource, this may
make the situation worse as making knowledge public
may be seen as threatening. What is natural is knowl-
edge hoarding. The not invented here syndrome also
predominates. So, compensation and performance evalu-
ation must be used to encourage knowledge sharing and
knowledge reuse.
2. The Need for Knowledge Sharing
The next question is: why share knowledge? There are
several reasons that make this activity essential. Many
industrial countries today have an ageing population, im-
plying a graying workforce for many organisations. This
has led to the requirement that the knowledge they have
accumulated over the years be codied in some form and
passed on before they retire. In the US, the older peo-
ple 65 years or more numbered 34.5 million in 1999.
They represented 12.7% of the US population, about one
in every eight Americans (FIFARS, 2000). In Singapore,
this gure is 7.3% (Leow, 2000). The immense pool of
experience possessed by this cohort has to be passed on
to the next generation of workers. Other than through
retirement knowledge can be lost through redundancy,
resignation and even through promotion.
Drucker (1994) proposes that applied knowledge is
eective only when it is highly specialised. Highly spe-
cialised knowledge workers means that teams become
the work unit rather than the individual himself. They
become productive only if combined into a single, uni-
tion to separate the conjoined twins Ganga and Jamuna,
where a multidisciplinary team of specialists comprising
neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, anaesthetists, paediatri-
cians, neurologists, a geneticist, dietician and physical,
speech and occupational therapists participated. In fact,
Dr. Chumpon Chan and Dr. Keith Goh, the neurosur-
geons who led the team, attributed the success of the
surgery and the fact that the team was able to sustain
the lengthy procedure to the great teamwork having
implicit trust in each other, and the ability to hand over
part of what one is doing, having a rest, and knowing that
ones fellow surgeon is going to carry on and do a good
job (SingHealth, 2001).
Organisations have an enormous knowledge assets.
As an example (and this example considers only one type
of explicit knowledge), Lucent and its predecessor com-
panies have been issued more than 37,000 patents, dating
back to the 1800s. They currently obtain patents at the
rate of three per day. Much knowledge sharing has to
take place to take advantage of the knowledge silos that
exist in organisations, to avoid reinventing the wheel, to
reduce duplication and replication of eort, and to avoid
the same errors. When Intel embarked on an eort to ac-
celerate the development process of microprocessors, they

found that more than 60% of the problems (they) faced
had been encountered and solved earlier by another team
(Yu, 1998, p. 194).
A highly mobile workforce, with frequent global
travel, supported by technologies like hot-desking (or
hotelling), where workers do not have their own desks,
but share the available workspace depending on their
needs: this is commonly practised by organisations in
which the sta spend a lot of time out of the oce
meeting clients. An increase in the number of large,
distributed organisations, brought about in part by the
number of mega-mergers. The Exxon Mobil Corpora-
tion, ranked number 1 in both Fortune 500 and Global
500 in 2001, has 123,000 employees worldwide, and
supplies rened petrochemical products to more than
40,000 service stations that operate in 118 countries
under the Exxon, Esso and Mobil brands. This has in
turn led to an increase in virtual teams teams that
work across distance, time zones, and organisational
boundaries, and whose members may never meet at all,
except in cyberspace. Working together apart presents
its own set of problems. Besides the time dierence,
team members are deprived of one anothers nonverbal
communication facial expressions, gestures, and vocal
inections, which provide clues to their colleagues opin-
ions, attitudes and emotions. Deciphering the meaning
of text-based messages like the email can sometimes be
confusing, especially when the writer/sender is trying to
be sarcastic or facetious (Gould, 1997). Getting together
for lunch is impossible, and so is dropping by informally
in anothers oce. These large organisations have a large
portfolio of products and services, far too many for any
one person to fathom. The same idea can be adapted to
dierent processes, products or services.
Competition based on speed to market and shorten-
ing product life cycles. Intel accelerated the development
process for microprocessors and ensured the quick har-
vesting of research results by co-locating the process de-
velopment and production groups to facilitate exchange
of ideas and to enable the groups to gain an understand-
ing of the issues they faced (Yu, 1998).
One of the diculties in getting people to share
knowledge emanates from the nature of knowledge it-
self. Knowledge is mobile and portable, and knows no
boundaries. This has made knowledge sharing poten-
tially dangerous in that a good idea can be easily copied
when shared. In the 1970s, the idea of the graphical user
interface (GUI) was developed at Xerox Palo Alto Re-
search Center (PARC). Steve Jobs, one of the co-founders
of Apple, was invited to tour the research facility, and
was immediately struck by the possibilities of GUI. He
went back to Apple determined that the next genera-
tion of machines they would market would have the same
Factors Impacting Knowledge Sharing 51
style of user interface as the one they had seen at PARC
(Edwards, 1995).
3. Technology and Knowledge Sharing
Knowledge sharing has been made more feasible by the
recent rapid advances in the power of computing technolo-
gies, coupled with a signicant reduction in their prices.
The fundamental requirement of knowledge sharing has
always been technology. The invention of language and
writing enabled knowledge sharing to take place for the
rst time in 3300 bc. The movable type was the next ma-
jor technology for knowledge sharing. This was followed
by the telegraph, radio, telephone, facsimile and other
communication technologies. Two-way radio handsets are
possible for small-scale knowledge sharing, but only the
Internet permits scaling up, and enables knowledge shar-
ing on a global scale. It is no wonder then that numer-
ous IT vendors, from search and retrieval (e.g. Verity)
to traditional database (e.g. Oracle), have made knowl-
edge management the cornerstone of their recent prod-
uct plans and marketing campaigns. Over 1800 software
products have been labelled as knowledge management
solutions (Edgar, 1999). The interest in knowledge man-
agement is also coinciding with the maturation of tech-
nologies that will facilitate its success, of which Monsanto
has identied groupware, messaging, Web browsers, doc-
ument management, search and retrieval, data mining,
visualisation, push technology, and intelligent agents, as
being essential to its own knowledge management system
(Hibbard, 1997).
4. Knowledge-Sharing Framework
In Holsapple and Joshis (1999) summary and analysis
of knowledge management frameworks, none of the 10
analysed addressed specically knowledge sharing. Such
a framework can be used to articulate and understand
the dierent factors that impact knowledge sharing in an
organisation. It will also provide a basis for assessing the
current state of knowledge-sharing friendliness or readi-
ness of an organisation. This in turn, can be used to plot a
trajectory to a desired state in the future, presumably to
one more conducive to knowledge sharing. Alternatively,
one can also adopt McDermott and ODells (2001) sug-
gestion to introduce knowledge management initiatives
that t the organisations style, as revealed by an appli-
cation of the framework.
Knowledge sharing can be seen as a process taking
place between two actors, and the process may each com-
prise one or more people (Fig. 1). It may take place be-
tween two people in a one-to-one relationship such as a
conversation over cup of coee. It may be a one-to-many
52 C. K. Lee and S. Al-Hawamdeh
Fig. 1. Knowledge-Sharing Framework.
relationship as in a person giving a presentation or de-
livering a speech, or a many-to-one relationship as in a
group of authors speaking to a person through their
co-written book, and many-to-many relationship as in a
WITs team presenting to the judges. The process uses
one of three channels:
face-to-face: unmediated (as in a dialogue over a cup
of tea);
face-to-face: technology mediated (as in videoconfer-
encing);
through a document (as in a videotaped recording of a
cooking demonstration).
Factors aecting knowledge sharing can arise from the
actors, the knowledge being shared, the channel, the or-
ganisation or the broader environmental climate.
5. Factors Arising from the Actors
These factors arise because of an attribute that belongs
to one or both the actors in the knowledge-sharing pro-
cess. A modication of these factors will require mod-
ication of the attributes of the actors. The mobility
of knowledge workers, resulting in teams where members
originate from dierent countries and speak dierent rst
languages, makes this problem worse.
Communication skills. Knowledge needs to be com-
munication in listening, by oral means, and in writ-
ing. Language is the expression of thought, and
the foundation of understanding. It is therefore of
primary importance in knowledge sharing, which is
essentially a communication process. Bad grammar,
inadequate vocabulary, poor writing skills (such as not
being able to tailor the language used to the audi-
ence intended) will result in ineective or complete fail-
ure in knowledge sharing. Presentation skills are also
important.
People skills. People skills are needed to interact suc-
cessfully with others. Those who are quick to point
out others faults but slow to praise their strengths,
those who can communicate with computers but not
with people will not get along well with others at work.
They need skills like conict management, giving and
getting feedback, consensus-building and lobbying
essentially people skills.
Motivation. The possessor of the knowledge may fear
losing ownership of knowledge. If knowledge is so valu-
able, and so essential to competitiveness, who would
want to share it? If anything, the importance of knowl-
edge now has made expert power truer than ever. In
Singapore, the kiasu mentality may dominate. Here

the possessor of knowledge may not be willing to part
with his or her knowledge for fear of losing out. It
may result in losing, e.g. dependence, and therefore
the possessor may pre-empt any loss of dependence
by keeping quiet. Besides motivation, initiative is also
important.
Absorptive capacity. Cohen and Levinthal (1990) found
that sharing is more likely to occur when a founda-
tion of prior relevant knowledge exists. This pro-
vides the foundation that gives organisational members
the ability to identify, assimilate and exploit external
information.
Reputation. This has to do with perceived reliability
(whether the quality would be what is required, and
whether delivery is likely to be on time), trustworthi-
ness, being knowledgeable and prestige of the knowl-
edge possessor.
Appreciation of the importance of knowledge. In a
study done at Cliord Chance, it was found that a
problem encountered was the lack of appreciation of
the potential value of knowledge to another lawyer
(Webb, 1998).
Incompatible personality. In a study of PriceWater-
house, Coopers found that a strong pro-active,
outgoing personality is important irrespective of qual-
ications and previous experience (Webb, 1998).
Disciplinary ethnocentrism. Owing to dierent profes-
sional training, dierences in each disciplines philos-
ophy, and the process of socialisation to the norms of
ones own profession, which tends to occur in isola-
tion from other disciplines, disciplinary ethnocentrism,
i.e. viewing ones own discipline as superior and most
relevant, may surface in an organisation and impede
knowledge sharing.
Technophobia. Although an increasing percentage of
the workforce is computer literate, a signicant pro-
portion nds computers and other telecommunications
technologies intimidating. Training, the adoption of
user-friendly and intuitive interfaces, and the introduc-
tion of pen-based computing and speech recognition
capabilities can help nudge the workforce to a more
eective use of technology.
6. Factors Arising from the Channel
The channel is the medium by which knowledge is com-
municated or passed on from one party to another. A
major dierence with the three channels is the richness
of the communication possible. The printed document
is not able to convey rich, tacit knowledge. Face-to-
face communication mediated by technology is better,
Factors Impacting Knowledge Sharing 53
e.g. videoconferencing enables passion and enthusiasm,
facial expressions and voice inections to be conveyed.
Face-to-face unmediated communication has the largest
bandwidth.
Document. The document may be dened broadly
as any expression of human thought, including pic-
tures, other graphic and audio-visual materials and
even sculptures (Buckland, 1997). Xerox regards the
document as the DNA of knowledge (Saw, 1999, p.
28). Documents of all types are used by organisations
to share knowledge paper documents (e.g. reports,
white papers, manuals, policy statements), video and
audio cassettes, and computer les (e.g. those gener-
ated by word processors, spreadsheets and databases).
The key characteristic of the document as a channel is
the inability of the actors to tailor the knowledge that
is shared to the needs and situation of the user. In this
sense, the knowledge contained in a document is xed,
often for posterity. However, a document eliminates
the need for coincidence of time and location between
the actors. The knowledge is recorded in some xed
form. Mah (1999) captures this in the dedication in
her book, Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an
Unwanted Daughter; she states that she hopes to cre-
ate something . . . imperishable (i.e. not lasting only
for a eeting moment), and so somebody may see it
a hundred years from now (transcends time), with-
out actually having left their own homes (transcends
distance). The document represents the form of knowl-
edge sharing with the lowest bandwidth.
Face-to-face: unmediated. Face-to-face (unmediated)
knowledge sharing takes place in meetings and brief-
ings, in presentations and lectures, in in-house train-
ing sessions, in a conversation over a cup of coee or
over lunch, etc. The key advantage here is the ability
of the recipient to request customisation, clarication
or elaboration of the knowledge shared. This is also
the richest form of knowledge sharing. Knowledge can
be tailored directly and immediately, and made rele-
vant to the needs of the user. The downside is twofold.
Firstly, coincidence of both time and location is re-
quired in this mode of sharing. Secondly, knowledge
sharing unmediated by technology is often unrecorded,
thus lending itself to distortion.
Face-to-face: technology mediated. Face-to-face (tech-
nology mediated) knowledge sharing takes place in
videoconferencing, listservs, groupware, newsgroups,
virtual team rooms, email, voicemail, etc. Coincidence
of location is not required, but the coincidence of time
may be required (e.g. videoconferencing), or may not
be required (e.g. email). The key dierence between
54 C. K. Lee and S. Al-Hawamdeh
this mode and the document is the ability to customise
the knowledge shared in a real-time or near real-time
fashion. A technological infrastructure is required to
facilitate this mode of knowledge sharing. Many in-
novative software have been developed to enable this
channel, e.g. Collaborative Virtual Workspace, which
is an oce automation environment that enables peo-
ple to converse, collaborate and interact regardless of
their geographic location. Knowledge may or may not
also be in recorded form. In email, there is a permanent
record, in walkie-talkies, there is none. The reliability
of the technology is paramount for knowledge sharing,
e.g. a server shutdown can cripple an organisation.
Technology can also cause information overload, e.g.
the deluge of emails that no one wants, or dares to
throw away.
Tacit knowledge does not lend itself to methods of shar-
ing other than unmediated face-to-face. This is why
sabbatical attachments are still practised in universities,
although well-developed communications infrastructure
exists in many universities. This also explains why ap-
prenticeship still gures prominently in the medical and
the legal elds (in the form of housemanship and pupi-
lage, respectively). This is a time where they can learn
by asking, watching and doing.
7. Factors Arising from the
Organisational Environment
The organisational environment in which the knowledge-
sharing process takes place imposes its own set of barriers.
Organisational structure. Tall organisations, charac-
terised by layer upon layer of management piling ver-
tically and a narrow span of management, tend to be
very bureaucratic (not to mention expensive), and are
not conducive to knowledge sharing. The trend is to-
wards at organisational structures, which make more
use of teams.
Reward system and incentives for knowledge sharing.
These refer to the carrots and sticks used to encourage
knowledge sharing. In Jungle.com, knowledge sharing
is encouraged by paying 5 to every member of the
sta that contributes an idea through the online sug-
gestion box, whether it is good, crap or indierent
(Hill, 2000, p. 38). If implemented, they can choose to
keep the 5 or take 10% of the savings over the rst
few months. In Buckman Labs, the top 150 knowledge
sharers were recognised at a one-time event at a resort.
They received an IBM ThinkPad 755, a leather com-
puter bag, and got to listen to a presentation by Tom
Peters (Rifkin, 1996). As a method of encouraging
lawyers to donate information or notes of expertise,
Cliord Chance oers champagne for the best dona-
tion each month (Webb, 1998, p. 62).
Availability of knowledge-sharing champions. These
are important to act as knowledge-sharing evangelists,
to generate and spread positive paranoia, and to
lobby the owners of the needed knowledge to con-
tribute. Monero (2001) describes the CoPs at the Inter-
American Development Bank as fragile and dependent
on the presence of exceptional individuals who devote
time to nurture the network.
Oce layout. Does the way in which the workplace
is laid out facilitate chance encounters when moving
from room to room? Can a person bump into some-
one from another department in the hallway and get
to talking? Allen (1977) concluded after a decade-long
study that the likelihood of any two people communi-
cating drops o dramatically as the distance between
their desks increases. We are four times as likely to
communicate with someone 6 ft away as with someone
60 ft away. People seated 75 ft or more apart hardly
talk at all. The key factor here is whether the oce
layout encourages casual, non-threatening, social inter-
action among employees.
Work design. Knowledge sharing requires time doc-
uments need to be created (written, edited, proofread,
modied, and distributed or uploaded). Does the work
schedule allow time for reection and knowledge shar-
ing? Time is also needed to update, weed, etc. to pre-
vent the knowledge management system from turning
into a knowledge junkyard. Intranets will be used only
if it has content. What is often ignored is that the
Internet facilitates only the distribution of the content.
The creation of good content is labour-intensive it
just takes time to think of an idea, and then write it
down well.
Sta tenure or length of service. Many requirements
of a knowledge-sharing culture (e.g. trust, openness,
reputation, cooperation, commitment, loyalty, knowing
who knows what) require time to nurture or acquire.
With high turnover experienced by some organisations,
it will be dicult to create the atmosphere needed to
share knowledge. This problem is especially acute in
specic industries, e.g. telecommunications where the
norm is about 25% (Koss-Feder, 1998). The average
person in the US holds 9.2 jobs from age 18 to 34,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US
Department of Labor. More than half of these jobs
were held between the ages of 18 and 24 (Bureau of
Labor Statistics, 2000).
Management support. Does the management of
the organisation visibly support knowledge-sharing
activities? Recognition of knowledge sharing as an ac-
tivity for the purposes of time recording, provision of

budgetary and other resources for knowledge sharing
initiatives, and measures to raise the awareness and
visibility of knowledge-sharing activities in the organi-
sation can help promote it.
Organisational culture. In an MIT study of an un-
named company, later conrmed to be PriceWater-
house, Orliknowsky found that some employees were
reluctant to share knowledge because of the rms
intensely competitive culture, resulting in a back-
stabbing and aggressive environment. It was perceived
that power, which resided in the client base and those
with technical ability, would be lost if put into the Lo-
tus Notes database.
An environment of trust is conducive to knowledge shar-
ing. Intel practises constructive confrontation, where em-
ployees are encouraged to say when they disagree with
someone elses idea or proposal, whether it comes from
a peer, subordinate or a boss (Yu, 1998, p. 112). This
practice is considered essential to enable senior manage-
ment to hear all points before they make decisions. Trust
is clearly a prerequisite for this practice.
The way in which decisions are made is also impor-
tant. Companies adopting autocratic styles, where de-
cisions are made by edict, are less likely to succeed in
knowledge sharing, compared to organisations where par-
ticipatory or consensual decision-making styles are em-
ployed. The attitude of workers under strict, topdown
management would probably be why bother?.
8. Factors Arising from the
Characteristics of the Knowledge
being Shared
Some knowledge is easier to share than others. Levitt
(1989) describes the ability of Babe Ruth to hit home
runs as such a form of knowledge. While he could
not explain it, it did not prevent him from hitting
homers. The possessor of the knowledge does not need
to know what he knows in order to use it. Nonaka (1991)
describes the bread-making process as another such
example and calls this form of knowledge tacit knowl-
edge, deeply embedded in an organisations operating
practices. Knowledge that does not have a proven track
record will also be harder to sell.
9. Factors Arising from the Climate
These are barriers arising from the larger picture.
Three examples are the economic condition of the nation,
government policies and societal culture. Bonaventura
(1997) has suggested that when jobs are at stake, net-
works are withdrawn and individual knowledge is closely
guarded as a protection against termination. Such a
Factors Impacting Knowledge Sharing 55
scenario may occur when the nation is experiencing an
economic downturn. Government policies such as the
Foreign Talent (FT) policy in Singapore, if not well jus-
tied to the people, may create dissatisfaction and breed
resentment, creating barriers to the sharing of knowledge
either way FT to local and vice versa.
Societal culture also aects knowledge sharing. East
Asian societies (China, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore)
are strongly inuenced by Confucianism, the character-
istics of which are tight organisation of society, stratied
interaction (communication which is dependent on the
rank or gender of the actors), collectivistic pressure (pres-
sure to conform and win approval), emphasis on order
and harmony, avoidance of conict, hierarchies (respect
for the senior members of the organisation), and a ten-
dency for self-criticism (modest when appraising them-
selves). It may be more dicult for a member in such a
society to share knowledge. On the other hand, Western
societies (America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand), which are strongly inuenced by liberal individ-
ualism, tend to be loosely organised, individualistic (an
emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual), egalitarian
(less emphasis on rank and status), and with a tendency
for self-enhancement (more likely to regard themselves in
a positive light) (Ng, 2001). Although this may create
the ideal environment for knowledge sharing, it can also
work in the opposite direction. Teamwork may be di-
cult to achieve, and an argument or point of view may be
carried on longer than is productive.
10. Conclusion
As knowledge is now widely recognised as the most valu-
able and strategic resource of a business organisation,
sharing knowledge has assumed an important role in any
knowledge management initiative. A framework incor-
porating the actors in the knowledge-sharing process,
the channels through which the knowledge is shared,
the characteristics of the knowledge, the organisational
environment, and the broader environmental conditions
has been proposed. Barriers to knowledge sharing are
then attributed to each of the ve sources. This frame-
work provides the basis for assessing the current state of
knowledge-sharing friendliness or the readiness of an or-
ganisation. It can also be used to introduce knowledge
management initiatives that t the organisations style,
as revealed by an application of the framework.
References
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