The growth of knowledge management as a field signals a revolution in the way organizations do business because they are placing a greater emphasis on developing tacit knowledge, which might possibly increase the incorporation non-Western learning models. By the same token, Thomas Friedman, the author of The World is Flat, argues that employees all over the world are competing for the same service sector jobs. As competition tightens, only the best obtain the most coveted of posts. Friedman argues that increasingly, those that qualify have shifted from western circles, which means that the most influential people in the world are now distributed among more cultures. In short, I’m led to consider: is KM is a product of globalization, and is the inclusion of tacit knowledge in business practices a consequence of a more global involvement?
It is my belief that as transnational organizations begin to expand beyond a concentrated population of employees, it has become increasingly possible to envision creating an organizational memory that considers the different types of knowledge, as well as the different types of approaches to knowledge that might exist within an organization. Globalization and the “transnationalization” of industries have brought people of different networks, or cultures, to work together or learn together, eliminating some of the historical barriers that created sectionalized “know-how.”
In a global society, in which the majority of individuals are considered cultural hybrids, having spent different parts of their lives in different cities, among different languages and cultures, people have gained insightful exposure to the “know-how” of different communities. If communities have sufficient exposure to one another, and enough exchange among different cultural networks occurs, then it might very well be possible to translate the tacit knowledge from one culture to then next. Aside from having more contact among different cultural networks which allow them to negotiate understandings of “know-how,” the rise of knowledge management as a discipline has allowed non-Western pedagogical techniques to provide even greater access to otherwise culturally- segmented tacit knowledge.
Today, several organizations are considering the importance of oral storytelling as an alternative means of transmitting knowledge. All in all, globalization, and the bridging together of cultural networks of practice, have given individuals and organizations the context in which to exchange ideas and negotiate understandings of tacit knowledge, allowing individuals to explore alternative means of learning and transmitting knowledge. With the inclusion of non-Western learning techniques, I intuit that organizations will successfully learn to organize and represent knowledge in ways that can convey important organizational lessons such as context, while appealing to an international workforce.
This blog entry was originally written for Communities of Practice, a McGill University School of Information Studies course, under Professor Venkatesh.
