Cooperative versus Controlled Culture and Knowledge Transfer

Abstract

This article investigate the relationship between the organizational culture and the willingness to transfer knowledge, where knowledge sharing appears to be influenced by the individualistic or cooperative nature of the culture. Differences in context between the source and destination of knowledge will challenge knowledge transfer activities, which requires deeper understandings of socialization activities and management policies that influence knowledge transfer among people. Organisations need to encourage the notion that the quality of ideas is more important than the status of source. This article offers an empirical investigation to understand the conditions of culture of knowledge transfer using confirmatory factor analysis. It hypothesized a direct positive relationship between cooperative culture refers to as “knowledge oriented culture (KOC) socialisation activities†and controlled culture refers to as “management practisesâ€. Items representing the knowledge oriented culture (KOC) were developed from the findings of a wide review of literature regarding the most common frictions that inhabit and prevent knowledge transfer (KT). The main findings suggested that organisations should focus on and pay more to socialisation activities since it has more explanation powerful to organisation culture.

Keywords: Controlled culture, Cooperative culture, Knowledge transfer, Structural equation modelling.

This article investigate the relationship between the organizational culture and the willingness to transfer knowledge, where knowledge sharing appears to be influenced by the individualistic or cooperative nature of the culture. Differences in context between the source and destination of knowledge will challenge knowledge transfer activities, which requires deeper understandings of socialization activities and management policies that influence knowledge transfer among people. Organisations need to encourage the notion that the quality of ideas is more important than the status of source. This article offers an empirical investigation to understand the conditions of culture of knowledge transfer using confirmatory factor analysis. It hypothesized a direct positive relationship between cooperative culture refers to as “knowledge oriented culture (KOC) socialisation activities†and controlled culture refers to as “management practisesâ€. Items representing the knowledge oriented culture (KOC) were developed from the findings of a wide review of literature regarding the most common frictions that inhabit and prevent knowledge transfer (KT). The main findings suggested that organisations should focus on and pay more to socialisation activities since it has more explanation powerful to organisation culture.

 

Keywords: Controlled culture, Cooperative culture, Knowledge transfer, Structural equation modelling.