Culture encompasses the values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour of an organisation. Culture is how things get done in organisations. It is also a well-known fact that an organisation’s culture shapes its learning orientation. It is therefore important to understand the cultural aspects of the organisation before planning any initiative in e-learning or knowledge management.
In this article, I will build on a popular model for understanding organisational culture and present a map that can be used to make quick inferences when making decisions on other facets of organisational learning (e.g. e-learning or knowledge management initiatives).
Two Dimensions, Four Cultures
In their popular article, “What Holds the Modern Company Together” (Harvard Business Review, November-December, 1996), Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones present a matrix for understanding organizational culture. The two dimensions of the matrix are:
Sociability
Solidarity
Sociability is the amount of ‘sincere’ friendliness among members of the organisation. Here members are more like friends than just office colleagues. They tend to spend a lot of time in face-to-face communication, sharing ideas, and sustain a high level of unarticulated reciprocity. An important point to note here is that all this happens on an informal and natural basis; no strings attached.
High sociability has many advantages like, informal sharing of knowledge, out-of-the-box thinking and high esprit de corps.
But high sociability also has its disadvantages. For example, disagreements and criticisms are avoided in the fear of displeasing other friends. Poor performance is also tolerated for the same reason.
Solidarity on the other hand is the measure of the members of the organisation or community to pursue shared objectives, regardless of personal ties. Here a joint sense of purpose is most important. Even if members don’t know each other, a sense of high solidarity will bring them together to act as one.
High solidarity has many advantages like a strong sense of response to competitive encroaches and other organisational crisis and a low tolerance of poor performance.
But again, as in the case of high sociability, high solidarity has its disadvantages. These lie mainly in a “what’s in it for me?” attitude and ruthless turf battles.
These two dimensions of culture reveal four different types of culture (see Figure 1). These are:
Networked
Communal
Fragmented
Mercenary
Figure 1: The 4 dimensions of culture
Goffee and Jones stress the fact that no one quadrant is better than the others; it just represents the way an organisation shapes itself to deal with its working environment. For example, in the article they put business schools in the Fragmented quadrant simply because that is the best way for them to sustain themselves as an organisation. (Read the article for an in-depth description of these quadrants.)
One Model, Three Facets
The above model provides a good base for extending and understanding other facets of organisational learning. First, let’s analyse trust in organisations.
1. Trust and knowledge sharing
Trust is known to be the channel through which knowledge flows. In “Trust and knowledge sharing: A critical combination”, Daniel Z. Levin, Rob Cross, Lisa Abrams and Eric L. Lesser identify two kinds of trust that shape knowledge sharing:
Benevolence-based: belief that an individual will not harm another even when given the opportunity to do so. For example, if one member is in urgent need of information he might seek help from another member to get this information, but in doing so he trusts that this person will not intentionally do harm (e.g. by giving the wrong information) even if he has the opportunity to do so.
Competence-based: belief in another to be knowledgeable or competent in the subject area. Using the same example from above, when a member is in need of some information, he will seek and trust only those who he thinks have the competence to give him this information.
Placing these two dimensions on the culture model reveals the following (see Figure 2):
- Networked organisations have high benevolence-based trust, while Mercenary organisations have high competence-based trust.
- Fragmented organisations have low benevolence and competence based trust, while Communal organisations have both high benevolence and competence based trust.
Figure 2: Adding the dimensions of Trust to the model
Now let’s attempt to add another facet to this model.
2. Organisation work and knowledge sharing
In their classic paper, “Balancing Act: How to Capture Knowledge Without Killing It” (Harvard Business Review, May-June 2000), John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid make a strong case for the distinction between ‘process’ and ‘practice’. To quote, “There’s a large gap between what a task looks like in a process manual and what it looks like in reality”.
Process is what is laid down in rules and procedures, while practice is what actually takes place on the field.
Here’s a table on the differences between process and practice.
| Process |
Practice |
| The way tasks are organised |
The way tasks are done |
| Routine |
Spontaneous |
| Orchestrated |
Improvised |
| Assumes a predictable environment |
Responds to a changing, unpredictable environment |
| Relies on explicit knowledge |
Driven by tacit knowledge
|
| Linear |
Weblike |
If we overlay these two dimensions of organisational work on our model, it reveals the following (See Figure 3):
- Networked organisations rely heavily on practice, while Mercenary organisations rely heavily on process.
- Fragmented organisations rely less on process and practice, while Communal organisations rely heavily on both process and practice.
Figure 3: Adding dimensions of Organisational Work to the model
Let’s now add our last facet to this model.
3. Learning and Knowledge Strategy
In “What’s Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?” (Harvard Business Review, March-April 1999), Morten T. Hansen, Nitin Nohria and Thomas Tierney, propose two dimensions for managing knowledge based on the work practices of a company. These are personalisation and codification. Here’s an explanation of these two dimensions.
Personalisation: This is the people-to-people strategy. Here the effort is to like up people with other people and to grow networks and community of practices. Emphasis in on informal-knowledge sharing.
Codification: This is the people-to-documents strategy. Here the effort is to load intranets and databases with best practices, case studies and how-to guides to help people in their day-to-day work. The emphasis here is to reuse what is being already being done elsewhere in the organisation.
We an easily line up these two dimensions of learning strategy on our model as shown, and this is what it reveals:
- Personalisation strategy works best for Networked organisations, while the codification strategy works best for Mercenary organisations.
- A high balance of both strategies works best for Communal organisations, while, while a low balance of both strategies is the only hope for Fragmented organisations.
Figure 4: Adding dimensions of Strategy to the model
Conclusion
The extended model presented above can help take a stance when planning for a new e-learning or knowledge management initiative. It’s definitely not comprehensive, but it does offer a launching pad to analyse and discuss other critical issues.
The best way to use this model is to first take a stance on which quadrant(s) your department or organisation fits into and then work your way through the facets presented here or with other facets you’ve come up with and then make a case for the strategy for your initiative.
