MAYBE A 'KNOWLEDGE CULTURE' ISN'T ALWAYS SO IMPORTANT AFTER ALL!

摘要

The prevailing wisdom, and a common "best practice," of knowledge management (KM) is that a primary determinant of success in getting people to submit their most valuable personal knowledge to a repository is the existence of a "knowledge culture" in the organization. Recent empirical evidence suggests that, in at least some organizations, a knowledge culture and the associated "soft" methods of motivating knowledge submissions may be less effective than more traditional "hard-nosed" management approaches — such as the use of explicit incentives, meetings, and frequent monitoring. This column focuses on a question addressed in a recent study (King et al., 2002): "How to best motivate individuals to contribute their knowledge to a knowledge management system (KMS)," an issue that was recently ranked as the fourth most important issue by high-level KM practitioners.