Page 218 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

Pro-active management is required to decide on issues at all levels involved. To facilitate the ongoing process, a balance between all “hard” and “soft” factors, is requested. The designed framework (Goh, 2002) of the seven factors that implicate the ensured and needed effective transfer of knowledge are characterised as follows.
(i) Between all organisations’ levels, work teams and individual employees, a high level of trust is an inevitable condition for efficient KT processes. The behaviour roles of top and middle managers must be in line with a mission of openness and open to share readily the accessible organisational information.
(ii) Developing and maintaining a pervasive and collaborative culture of co- operation as an evidence for the existence of the level of trust in the organisation is important. Promoting teamwork, in cross-functional work groups combined with emphasis on sharing of work practices and to encourage individual employees and groups to work together is necessary.
(iii) Strong culture of continuous improvement, innovation and learning is requested. Orientation to recognise and to solve problems by each employee and utilise a pre-condition to absorb and share relevant information, inside and outside the organisation should be present. A focus on troubled issues e.g. product quality and/or after-sales service by employees can be helpful in the specific problem-solving as well as in the implementation of next-level solutions and innovative practices.
Availability of the “next-state-of-the-art” information technology is required to encourage and facilitate the unbiased (horizontal and vertical) exchange of information. That technology should be supported by an adequate organisational design with limited hierarchical bottle-necks, to encourage the untamed communication.
(v) To realise the desired values, employees are and should be educated and well-trained-on-the-job. It should be ensured that there is a consistent level of competencies and skills, acquired by the workforce, with both the skills and knowledge which make them not exclusively competent for their functional position but also for other task oriented occupations.
(vi) It should be ensured that evaluation of accomplished projects is encouraged by the implementation of “loose” instruments like reflection sessions for groups, that mentoring and individual coaching are applied and more strict instruments like organised “best practices” sharing and review meetings are organised. Thus, a balanced approach, not disturbing the shaky contrasts between instruments, encouraging the sharing and implementation of knowledge, will be beneficial for the recipient organisation.
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