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types of languages, such as jargon or shared technical or professional languages that
can cause a great deal of confusion. For example, the word “ network ” may be under-
stood to mean contacts for sales and marketing people, whereas the interpretation of
the same word by telecommunications engineers would refer to a system of towers. A
knowledge dictionary of commonly used terms within the organization, together with
a good, up-to-date thesaurus that cross-references all known synonyms, would greatly
assist in overcoming this type of cultural change barrier.

Key Points

• Culture penetrates to the essence of an organization — it almost analogous with the
concept of personality in relation to the individual and this acute sense of what an
organization is — its mission, core values — seems to have become a necessary asset of
the modern company.
• There is the challenging question of whether or not organizational culture can be
changed and/or managed.
• Organizational culture consists of the set of norms, routines, and unspoken rules of
how things are done in that organization.
• An organization ’ s culture may be in differing states of maturity, and these can be
assessed using a variety of organizational and KM maturity models.
• It is particularly important to address organizational culture issues in the case of a
merger and in the case of a virtual or highly distributed organization.

Discussion Points

1. What is the culture of an organization? Why is it important to understand?
2. What is the contribution of organizational culture to the intellectual capital of the
organization?
3. What do we mean when we talk about changing the culture of an organization?
What would be some examples?
4. How would we go about assessing the cultural readiness of an organization with
respect to planned KM interventions? How would we modify our KM implementation
strategy based on the results of such an assessment?
5. What are some of the maturity models that can be used to situate a company
with respect to its KM culture? Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each of these
maturity models.