Page 22 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

The strategy of an organisation is often based on the engrained ability to combine the knowledge generated from a diversity of disciplines and sources. Intertwined in knowledge management, two different directions can be found: (i) a commodity based perspective to be targeted on the acquisition, conversion and storage of knowledge and (ii) a group-oriented, community perspective, directed to the functions of knowledge and the ability to emphasise on the implementation on knowledge-in-practice. In the underlying research the community, group-oriented perspective is accepted and implemented as the main direction.
Considering the multi-disciplinary properties of KM, in the underlying study there is an integrated approach with a focus on the “integration” perspective. As argued by Davenport and Prusak (1998) “KM draws from existing resources that the organisation may already have in place-good information systems management, organisational change management and human resource management practices”.
Another focus is on the “strategy” perspective, which, according to Beijerse (2000), is “the achievement of the organisation’s goals by making the factor knowledge productive”.
Both directions are focused on boosting the improvement of actions in the areas in which organisations are challenged by disruptive, chaotic and non-predictable environments, to be able to mobilise the organisation’s knowledge repository and to
20