An Empirical Examination of the Influence of Organizational Culture on Knowledge Management Practices

By Maryam Alavi, Timothy R. Kayworth, Dorothy Elliott Leidner. Journal of Management Information Systems, 2005

850 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Knowledge management to facilitate the creation, storage, transfer, and application of knowledge in organizations has received wide attention in practice and research in the past several years. Often cited as a significant challenge in knowledge management practices is the issue of organizational culture. Although many studies raise the issue of organizational culture's influence on knowledge management success, few investigate the way in which this influence manifests itself. This paper aims to explore how organizational culture influences knowledge management practices. Using a case study method, we examine the cultural values and knowledge management approaches within a large global information services company and one of its knowledge communities. The findings highlight the influence of culture on the use of knowledge management technologies and the outcomes of such use.

Subfields: Communication, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a482258b2a503a25ee51ba3b41bcc0f867d4db84

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Citations in the corpus

‘I’m busy (and competitive)!’ Antecedents of knowledge sharing under pressure (2014, background): “…much of the research on knowledge sharing in organizations has focused on how workers’ attitudes and behaviours contribute to knowledge sharing in organizations (e.g., Wang & Noe, 2010), and how these factors are affected by organizational culture and management support (e.g., Alavi et al, 2005).”
Guest editorial: qualitative studies in information systems: a critical review and some guiding principles (2013, methodology): “Some deductive approaches used include pattern matching to examine hypotheses (e.g., Harris et al. 2009) and framework guided coding process (e.g., Alavi et al. 2006).”
Organizational Factors to Support Knowledge Management and Innovation (2011, background): “, 2006; Yang, 2007;) and indirect effects, in which culture plays a mediating role when it is understood as collaborative or cooperative learning for further innovation (Janz and Prasarnphanic, 2003) or as a moderator by improving the effectiveness of KM technologies (Alavi et al., 2005).”
Knowledge sharing practices as a facilitating factor for improving organizational performance through human capital: A preliminary test (2008, background): “However, values underlie the events, activities and human relationships (Alavi et al., 2005– 2006; Van Maanen & Barley, 1985) that constitute organizational cultures.”
Innovation intermediaries and collaboration: Knowledge–based practices and internal value creation (2018, neutral): “Knowledge-based practices adopted by innovation intermediaries can in ﬂ uence their ability to generate ﬁ nancial and non-ﬁ nancial value from collaborative projects (Wenger and Snyder, 2000; Gold et al., 2001; Alavi et al., 2005; Martín-de Castro, 2015).”
A multidimensional view of intellectual capital: the impact on organizational performance (2015, result): “These two insignificant findings differ from the previous studies (Weston et al., 2007; Nazari et al., 2009; Alavi et al., 2005; Janz and Prasarnphanich, 2003).”
Knowledge management and organizational performance: a decomposed view (2011, background): “Hence, a knowledge-friendly culture is regarded as one of the most important factors impacting knowledge management and the outcomes from its use ( Alavi et al. , 2005-2006”