LIBR246 Week 7 Post

• Describe the impact you think organizational culture has on knowledge-sharing.

Organizational culture appears to have a huge effect on knowledge sharing.  Without a proper knowledge sharing culture implementing new tools for internal collaboration is a waste of time.  The organization, according to Corporate Culture, Not Technology, Drives Online Collaboration, must be open to online collaboration and not demand face interaction.  Also, sharing is vital and no one gets to hoard their own information when it can be used for the good of the company.  When working in an online environment all employees must be aware of personal “space” and time online, after work hours may not be the best time to discuss business.  Employees with technology backgrounds are a plus for encouraging online internal collaboration in addition to supportive management that encourage the social software use.  

The article Enterprise 2.0: Culture is as Culture Does mentions a few more ways in which company culture can impact social software use and internal collaboration.  One way in which internal collaboration online can be encouraged is defining real uses for the software.  There must be real reasons to begin collaboration, especially when using online tools that employees may not be familiar with.  For example, without these class discussion questions I would be disinclined to blog simply because other aspects of school and work get in the way.  Yet blogging and sharing becomes a helpful tool because there is a specific reason I am using this web 2.0 tool.  An aspect of culture that can have disastrous effects on collaboration is a culture of competition in a company.  This means people are disinclined to share their ideas and data because they want to maintain their own edge, no form of collaboration can continue when this is the dominant culture. Employees should model proper collaboration, offer incentives, discourage monopolizing information, and give reminders and offer opportunities for internal collaboration. Finally, collaboration culture should be maintained with employee feedback and opinions.  If the employees enjoy the internal collaboration tools the culture is likely to be conducive to sharing...if employees are unhappy with their collaboration tools the culture will likely discourage collaboration.  Overall, internal collaboration in an online world can continue when a culture of sharing exists among employees and employers with positive encouragement of the behavior.