Unwillingness to Help (Barriers to Interunit Collaboration)

Another barrier to collaboration is the unwillingness to collaborate.   This occurs when people refuse to share their knowledge or expertise to assist someone who is in their own unit or organization.  This can be due to pride, competing to stay on board, competing to get a promotion, etc.  Whatever the cause it results in hoarding-of-expertise.  When  acompany has a an enviroment reinforced by policies that pressure employees to compete with other co-workers expertise sharing tends to cease or is delayed.  This can cause the organization's left hand to be complete oblivious to what the right is doing.  Unecessary set backs and confustion can occur.  In addition, the hoarding-of-expertise can result in stunting the organizations potential by limiting knowledge growth, creativity, and innovation.

The hoarding-of-expertise can be very costly to an organization and cost it its competive advantage.  To combat this problem many companies are reorganizing their system for awarding performance. Those who have provided signifcant help while performing their own duties are the first considered for promotions, rather than those who hoarded their expertise to gain an advantage.

Inability to Find Expertise (Barriers to Interunit Collaboration)

The inability to track and find expertise can be linked to an insuffcient communication structure.  This communication structure can be either caused by the lack of social connections, long distances, improper database tracking, etc that cause a break down in communication.

To solve this problem new connections can be made between existing parties to form a close knit network, that allows knowledge and expertise to be more readily available.  Also, individuals who have had positions in several parts of the network can be used connectors to bridge the gap and coordinate new connections between different parties who are unfamiliar with each other.

Unwillingness to Collaborate (Barriers to Interunit Collaboration)

The unwillingness to collaborate is a big obstacle to interunit collaboration.  This stems from normal human nature or tribal instinct. Many times people believe that they or those who are apart of their particular group are superior to others outside or they feel like its them against the world.  This natural behavior is called in-group bias and must be discouraged and people must be taught to value outside help.  People with in-group bias may see a perfectly valid soultion to a situation and view it as wrong if it came from outside of their peer group. 

To resolve the unwillingness to collaborate among management and organziational departments, BP monitor managers and departments and hold them accountable to insure that they are cooperating and sharing knowledge to provide solutions to their problems. 

In addition many companies conduct evaluations in which they also check to see if a possible recruit is willing to be a team player and ask for help rather than trying to resolve the situation on their own.

Interunit Collaboration

Interunit Collaboration is important among corporations and large organizations that own the large chunks of the market in the particular service or industry they are in.  The large organizations realize the importance of collaborating to achieve common goals. The goals might pertain to cost saving, better decision making, increasing revenue, innovation or enhancing their current capacities.  In many cases these companies have already acquired all of the the physical assets that exist that do not already belong to one of their large competitors. In these cases the companies change their attention to knowledge managing, creating, and sharing.  Interunit collaboration is done between a two companies or maybe a few others but the number has to be kept low.  This in order for the organization to gain a competive edge over another competing company.  If a company analyzes their situation and find that they are better alone than in collaborative unit than they should participate in one.  Organzations should only participate if it will give them an edge.

( ( (OC) ) ) Organizational Culture

The four basic organizational sub cultures were identified as involvement, consistency, adaptability, and mission.

Involvement cultures are great for organizations focusing on a bottom up structure for their business to foster new ideas. This type of culture inspires everyone on the team by making everyone feel like their contribution is valued. People in this culture are like stockholders who have invested their time and knowledge who expect a return on their investment cause they co-owners in organizations joint venture.

Consistent cultures are cultures that emphasize less freedom in the spontaneity of ideas and focus on more control. These cultures stress values to earn member commitment, since involuntary commitment is lost in the process of implementing greater control. These organizations are very rigid and not very susceptible to change. This type of culture exists more where a top down structure is in place.

Adaptive cultures are more likely to relate to involvement cultures rather than consistent cultures, because change is welcome. Except with adaptive cultures adaptability to existing external conditions is emphasized for the organization's survival. Adaptive culture can also exhibit mix of consistent culture because it may have a strong central management that constantly pushes the organization towqard change to insure a competitive edge, etc.

Mission cultures could be a mix of the previous three, but this organization is more mission biased in its approach to its goals. However this organizations are less likely to emphaaize change and adaptability. This type of organizational culture would probably not be a great structure to follow in the realm of informatiion systems since the external environment is always changing and advancements in knowledge management are constantly arrising.

Its important for organizations to implement a mix of the cultures and not focus on a specic one. The two most important organizational cultures in the realm of informations systems are probably adaptibilty and involvement. This is because these are the basis of knowledge management. You must have involvemnt to pool knowledge from all sources and adaptibilty to allow for the ease of flow of information.

Limits of Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing is important as it relates to not communities of practice and individuals coming together combining everyone's puzzle piece to form a picture. That is very important to the accumulation of knowledge and the ability to trigger new renaissances in knowledge management. However it also important to place limits on knowledge sharing. This is particularly true in the realm of competing businesses and countries to maintain a competitive advantage. The importance of of limiting knowledge sharing is seen in the laws and regulations companies and governments uphold when confidential information is leaked. This is because knowledge is not just an abstract intangible concept, but an asset.

Knowledge is neutral like money; it just depends on whose possession it is in, that makes it good or evil (bad). It can be used for good or enrich the human experience, or can be used to do wrong and oppress. Because knowledge is an asset that can be used for bad it is not always bad to limit knowledge sharing.

Communities of Practice

Communities of practice in relation to knowledge management, are composed of individuals and groups that come together to find, share, transfer, and archive acquired knowledge for the greater good of the community or to accomplish a goal or task. The universe is full of an infinite amount of information waiting to be captured and converted to knowledge and then converted to wisdom. Individuals because of their experiences, backgrounds, and encounters have accumulated large amounts of knowledge that is useless when kept to one's self. However when these individuals come together to create a community of practice they build a bank of knowledge, where knowledge can store and archived for a greater good of the community as a whole.