Organizational supports and knowledge sharing

Knowledge is considered a power. The most important element in knowledge management is to share knowledge. People also desire to store something as an individuals’ initiative and they do not want to share with others. Therefore, the prerequisite of knowledge management is to set up an environment and culture of knowledge sharing in organization. Presently, more and more organizations have begun to focus attention on characteristic of organizational culture affecting knowledge sharing.

Consequently, organizational culture is considered a core factor in the KM area, and as a determinant of knowledge sharing.

Organizational culture, however, is complex and multi-faceted. It consists of many factors that affect knowledge sharing in organization, such as organizational structure, leadership, information system, reward systems, etc. However, this study aims to identify a set of factors that appear to support the knowledge sharing within organization. The author focus on three factors in which cultural characteristic influence knowledge sharing process among employees.

2.1 Working environment and knowledge sharing

The working environment is not a small factor. Most of employees expect to work in companies that have a professional, modern environment with employment policies and equal opportunities of career promotion. A friendly working environment helps to reduce the pressure of work as well as to promote the communication between individuals in organization. Developing a good environment of knowledge sharing between the employees and managers and creating dynamic working environment are one of the crucial characteristic that support knowledge sharing process. Consequently, creating innovative environments which meet employees’ need as well as acquiring manager’s goal is the challenge of organization (Bradley and Osborne, 1999).

In study of Holsapple and Joshi, (2000), the authors indicated some factors that derived from environmental influence, such as competition, technology, time and organizational climate. For example, it is important to distribute time for individual learning, co-operate, knowledge creation and sharing activities (Oliver and Kandadi, 2006). These factors must support learning and sharing of knowledge by building an environment that foster conversation, relationships and trust among employees (Holowetzki, 2002).

In addition, interpersonal trust was viewed as a key factor of experience exchanging.

Not everyone is willing to share knowledge each other because they provide information and expect the provision of information will be reciprocated in the future. In Hsiu-Fen (2006) study, they noted that interpersonal trust promotes effective knowledge sharing and eliminates resistance barriers to knowledge sharing. Trust plays a crucial role in knowledge sharing between communities. When member trust each other, they tend to increase exchange of knowledge and this has clearly affected on knowledge sharing

activities (Wann-Yih, Badri, 2010). Another a view of point was discussed in Neish and Mann’s research (2010) is interaction between trust and relationship. According to their study, trust will enhance relationships and in turn, relationships will create trust within organization.

2.2 Leadership and knowledge sharing

Leadership is verbal and nonverbal communication that facilitates a team’s transactional and task process in achieving members’ and the team’s and goals. (Gay and Donaldl, 1997)

The role of leader is extremely important in creating a knowledge sharing environment. According to the research of Holowetzki (2002), leadership provides strong and dedicated commitment to knowledge management initiatives. Additionally, it creates the vision, mission, and objectives for the organization as it develops its knowledge management system. The leadership factor has virtually played an important facilitator in knowledge sharing environment in which employees are encouraged to apply their knowledge to solve problem. Based on the results of their study, Oliver, & Kandadi (2006) pointed out some of positive leadership characteristics, namely empowering subordinates, allocation of resources, openness toward change and experimentation, developing trust, tolerance to mistake and building long-term perspective of the organizational goals among employees. Common set of above attributes are necessary aspect in most of managers for developing knowledge management. In addition, Hsiu Fen and Gwo-Guang, (2004) noted that the importance of senior managers who are key decision makers is to promote a culture of knowledge sharing. They emphasized the

perception of senior managers toward knowledge sharing and their intention to encourage knowledge sharing.

Furthermore, a few scholars have studied on the difference between top managers and middle managers in supporting knowledge sharing process. Kumar Singh (2008), as cited by Greengard (1998), senior managers need to understand the value of knowledge management and be willing to support and play aggressive role in decision making.

However, Singh also stressed that it has generally been found that the role of middle managers for knowledge management is to bridge the gaps that may exist between top managers and front-line workers.

Along with actively sharing knowledge, the managers encourage and support employees for increasing local knowledge resource. This process not only promotes individuals’ knowledge but also enhances organizational learning capacity. Consequently, leadership style is also emphasized in creating the success of organization. A leader acts as a catalyst or coordinator so that employees readily share knowledge together (Holsapple, Joshi, 2000).

2.3 Information communication technology (ICT) and knowledge sharing  

In order to effectively operated knowledge sharing activities, the role of technology, namely infrastructure, is very necessary. Technology is a key tool for sharing, storing, updating and using in knowledge management. For example, a company has a head quarter and other branches in over the world, the knowledge sharing activities through face to face meeting between too many places will be take a lot of time and fee, whereas, with a good online service and infrastructure knowledge can be easily transformed.

Knowledge is always created and this leads to knowledge resource in organization increase more and more. That is to say, develop a knowledge-sharing network base on knowledge portals is necessary for most of organization nowadays. Therefore, Oliver and Kandadi (2006) recommended that knowledge portals, in the form of intranets and extranets, are the most common type of infrastructure. The authors proposed technologies that should be integrated into systems and artificial intelligence tools, such as groupware, search engine, content management systems and virtual conferencing tools. Based on their research results, infrastructure is central for virtual communities and an essential part of all KM programs, making it a crucial for developing knowledge culture. This can be considered as wisdom that facilitate access to research results

On the other way, another tool that can diffuse and exchange data and publish information is intranet. It is considered as private network of organization where stored internal information. In order to clarify the importance of intranet, Stoddart (2001) asserted that effective intranets are based on internet concepts and technology to communicate internally and share information.

Moreover, knowledge resources in organization derive from distribution of employees and groups. In order to effectively connect and use these resources, knowledge should be codified and stored in databases and documents where employees can conveniently use and access in organization (Boh, 2006). As a result, technologies for providing infrastructure need to be updated for accessing the organizational knowledge resources. In Hsiu-Fen (2007) study, researcher believes that Information and communication technology (ICT) play effective role in knowledge management activities.

The use of ICT in facilitating new methods and applications allow organization to extend knowledge networks within organization.

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHOD

This chapter will give an introduction of research structure, research method, research respondents, and research design. Finally, the author drafts question design.