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The Role of Organizational Culture 225

Organizational environment

Organizational culture

Assess

Knowledge capture Knowledge sharing
and/or creation and dissemination

Contextualize

Knowledge acquisition
and application
Update

Figure 7.1
The cultural component in an integrated KM cycle

people hold central and that bind organizational groups. Culture is also a set of more
material elements or artifacts. These are the signs and symbols that the organization
is recognized by, and further, they are the events, behaviors, and people that embody
culture. The medium of culture is social interaction, the web of communications
that constitute a community. Here a shared language is particularly important in
expressing and signifying a distinctive organizational culture. This is particularly
apparent in communities of practice where members tend to have their own “ jargon ”
or “ brand. ”
There are, not surprisingly, many defi nitions of culture. One of the earliest defi ni-
tions was provided by Morgan (1977) who more recently ( 1997 ) describes culture as
“ an active living phenomenon through which people jointly create and recreate the
worlds in which they live ” (p. 141). For Morgan, the three basic questions for cultural
analysts are:
• What are the shared frames of reference that make organization possible?
• Where do they come from?
• How are they created, communicated, and sustained?