Page 88 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

“Organisations are repositories of knowledge. The important question is how individual and group interactions contribute to organisational knowledge creation. Without individuals, no organisation is able to create knowledge” (Inkpen & Dinur, 1998, p. 456). In addition, unless individual knowledge is shared with others and groups of individuals, limited impact on organisational effectiveness will occur. The knowledge, as transformed to the collective of an organisation from the individual employee, creates organisational knowledge, available to all levels of the organisation. When knowledge moves upwards in the organisation, there are options for improvement and adjustment by individual and organisational interactions.
According to Canestrino (2004, p.194) “Starting from the assumption that learning through cross-border alliances is a difficult and frustrating process, the analysis of only cultural dimensions, however, is not sufficient to explain both the complexity of international KT process and partner’s learning capabilities”. The type of alliance engaged by actors should also be considered in order to answer several questions. First “which type of learning develops within the collaboration (symmetrical or asymmetrical)”? Second, “what type of knowledge is object of transfer?” Third, “in which case partner’s learning capability is coherent with the concept of ACAP?” The cultural differences, as noted by Western advisors and business trainers, in the field of OL, strongly influence the KT process, as it is implemented from the Western perspective and approaches. “Especially when focused on Russia, as a part of the wider Central and East European setting, the Western Learning principles are not transferable directly into the classroom or seminar environment, since they are not detached from the rest of society” (Hollinshead & Michailova, 2001, p. 421).
The key differences between Western and Russian perspectives regarding the
KT and OL are described in the following section.
2.7.4 Absorptive Capacity
Another central attribute of the current study is that it focuses on OL and the presence and level of ACAP in Russian organisations. Cohen and Levinthal (1990) defined it as the “prior knowledge, which permits the assimilation and exploration of new knowledge and gives rise to creativity, permitting the sorts of associations and linkages that may have never been considered before” (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990, p. 129). It relates to the fact that learning is cumulative and “learning performance” is higher when the object of learning is already known. The attention is directed to the fact that the awareness and the inclusion of contextual specifications of the local environment in the organisation at stake, are crucial first for survival, and then for the creation of sustained value.
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