Individualist vs. Communitarian Cultures in KM
The other night at KM Chicago Ann Lee presented a summary of the CKO Summit from last October. There were a few interesting things that came out of the presentation, one of which was a slide discussing how globalization is impacting KM. Specifically, as organizations become truly global, how do those in the KM field account for differences between cultures that are more individualistic versus those that are more communitarian.
A graph was presented which identified the UK and US as more individualistic societies while China and India were more communitarian. This is a big question – how do you design KM initiatives so that it works for all cultures encompassed within a truly global organization? This ties in with something that emerged from my dissertation (which I’ll hopefully be posting a summary of the results in the next couple of months – stay tuned).
When asking participants of various geographical backgrounds to rank/rate Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for KM, the majority of participants found the listed CSFs as successful.? However, there were some differences that emerged between participants.? Although not statistically significant, participants that indicated that their primary geographic location of work was Asia ranked the CSFs slightly lower than participants of any other geographic region.
One possible explanation for this is linked to the potential North American bias that exists in the current literature on CSFs for KM, as well as other disciplines which the CSFs in my study were drawn from.? Not surprising considering there are a few publications suggesting that the design of KM initiatives and especially the design of KM systems have a heavy North American bias.
This brings about a new question which I would love to know the answer to: What CSFs for KM exist in Asian companies that don’t exist (or at the least aren’t as prominent) for KM initiatives in companies based in other geographic regions?? If we know what different CSFs for KM exist and can account for the relative weight of importance in each culture, can we then design better KM initiatives and systems?? I’m also curious if there are any organizations out there now that are bridging the gap successfully and how they go about it…