Towards a Detailed View on the Influence of Organizational Culture on Knowledge Sharing

It is often mentioned in the literature, either academic or practitioner, that for knowledge sharing to flourish in an organization it is important that the organizational culture allows such sharing to take place. Despite the acknowledgement of organizational culture as a major influence on knowledge sharing, the research on this topic still lacks some depth. Research that has been done, is either focusing on organizational culture as an abstract concept, or is trying to test the hypothesis that certain aspects of organizational culture lead to more and better knowledge sharing. A good understanding of how aspects of culture influence knowledge sharing behavior is however lacking. This research is intending to fill this gap by studying how organizational culture affects knowledge sharing. A comparative case study has been conducted at different departments from subsidiaries of a large Dutch construction company. Based on observations and interviews with employees of the selected departments, the organizational culture as well as the knowledge sharing behavior could be assessed. After processing and tabulating the qualitative data it has been analyzed to detect patterns in knowledge sharing behavior that are related to the dimensions of organizational culture. In this analysis step, several influences of organizational culture on knowledge sharing behavior were found. In terms of practical benefits, four out of eight dimensions can be regarded as most influencing. This could be interpreted as a focus for cultural interventions in organizations to stimulate knowledge sharing. The contribution to the KM research field is that propositions are formulated that could eventually lead to a complete theory on the way how organizational culture is influencing knowledge sharing. So far, the propositions are plausible to be valid for the researched company and at best for comparable contractors in the construction industry. Future research is needed to show a broader generalization of the results.