Knowledge management can be defined as the capability of an organization to build, share and utilize the shared information and knowledge of its products, practices and people to enhance organizational productivity and reduce activities that hamper the same. The importance of knowledge management systems in an organization is gaining more recognition day by day. As organizations aim at creating competitive advantage in increasingly competitive markets, they are focusing on more effective use of knowledge management systems.
The UNESCO defines culture as the “set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs” (UNESCO). Culture is an important aspect to consider while implementing these systems. Culture constitutes the basis of channelizing and use knowledge by providing frameworks for understanding and using the knowledge. As knowledge management is being applied in various multinational and multicultural organizations; issues in effectively implementing knowledge management in global and/or multicultural environments are surfacing. If a firm's head office in is New York and a regional office in Shanghai, cultural differences are sure to impact upon the knowledge management systems. The success of these systems depends upon identifying cultural differences between nations and understanding that value systems are not the same the world over. Addressing cultural challenges in implementing these systems to the advantage of the organization is strongly required.
It is important to understand that culture is a unique component that is so deeply rooted into people's lives that our ignorance of the same normally leads to failures. Knowledge management systems as well as other systems formed to improve an organization's performance should use all possible information about culture to escape mistakes due to lack of cultural knowledge and understanding. Some experts have proposed a Knowledge Requirement System approach to do away with the communication gap between the developers of a system and the users of the system. They identify this as one of the major reasons for systems failure. Technology is also an effective way of implementing this approach addressing the social aspects of knowledge management in an organization.
Boiling it down, it seems to be unrealistic to expect all users within the same multinational organization to possess the same cultural attributes, so knowledge management initiatives need to make out these limitations and allow for the differences. It should also be expected that the designers and developers of such a system will not belong to the same culture of the expected users. Also that information contributors and sources may be of a different context than that of the users and that the information users may not possess the same relative knowledge as the information contributors and sources. Not only traditions but the thought process as well as understanding and interpreting the order and classification of knowledge might be different. Therefore, applying cultural challenges in implementing these systems is extremely important.
