Knowledge Sharing and Organizational Culture

In today’s society, I think that the culture within a group or organization impacts the success of knowledge-sharing through social media interaction. There are many factors that affect the accomplishment of digital knowledge-sharing, and some of the core elements are the existence of a collaborative culture in an organization, technologically intelligent people, transparency, and a willingness to be flexible and use social software at home and at work. Without a foundation where members already work together to share thoughts and ideas, it is going to be difficult to create an environment where knowledge sharing thrives.

I think that effective knowledge-sharing requires a certain bond between group members, and the people need to be comfortable interacting and sharing information with each other in different environments. If workers are independent and desire to retain their “knowledge archipelagos” (Kelly, 2009), the collaborative culture does not exist and very few workers are going to participate in a digital knowledge-sharing effort.

I currently work in an environment where employees are constantly sharing experiences and openly interacting with one another. As of now we do not share knowledge digitally, but after reflecting on the work environment, I think it would be successful if the social software tools were implemented.  The culture of the organization contains many of the elements required to maintain collaboration and succeed in sharing knowledge. Workers are primarily open, interactive, transparent, and technologically savvy, and it seems like this would be a good base for successfully sharing knowledge digitally.