Question #4

What is organizational culture (OC)? the value perspective? the behavioral perspective? Are these two perspectives related to each other in any way?

Organizational culture is a set of shared, taken-or-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environments.
The value perspective either internally or externally, and have tradeoffs in stability and control versus flexibility and change. The behavioral perspective focuses on culture as defined by actual work practices. I don’t think they are related because the value perspective has a focus on underlying assumptions while behavioral perspectives do not.

How does OC influence knowledge creation?

While knowledge creation involves developing new content or replacing existing content within the organization’s tacit and explicit knowledge, it is also created, shared, amplified, and enlarged through social and collaborative processes as well as individuals’ cognitive processes. This being said, the nature of an organizations culture control could be more effective than a formalized control when it comes to creating knowledge.

How does OC influence knowledge transfer?

Organizational values and norms will influence what knowledge is considered to be important. It will also influence whether knowledge is viewed as a personal possession or as an organizational asset. This will influence the quality of knowledge that is committed to organizational memory.

In your opinion, how can knowledge management initiatives impact OC?

Most definitely. Coming from my small experience working for a big company, I found that knowledge is most often mishandled. And it is usually directly related to the culture of the organization. If more executives/managers took the time to understand the OC, then they could properly manage knowledge. If there is a rigid company culture, you can’t expect people to be immediately receptive to the open sharing of information and vice versa.