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KNOWLEDGE-INTENSIVE FIRMS 43

ers might be financially or symbolically rewarded for contributing to projects
they were not directly employed to work on. In this way, by implementing this
embedding mechanism in conjunction with other mutually reinforcing mech-
anisms, Schein suggests that knowledge sharing behaviour in the firm can be
encouraged and promoted as knowledge workers begin to recognize that knowl-
edge sharing is a core value within the firm.

Multiple perspectives on organizational culture
There is an overriding assumption in Schein’s work and all of the business
excellence literature that it is feasible and practicable for leaders of firms to
actively create and shape an organizational culture which promotes integra-
tion and consensus around dominant organizational values. An expert, highly
skilled and often highly educated and diverse workforce might, however,
quite naturally hold a wide range of beliefs and values, particularly when
diversity extends to national culture. Therefore it cannot simply be assumed
or taken for granted that knowledge workers in knowledge-intensive firms
will necessarily be willing to subsume their identity and personal value sys-
tems to those of the firm. The integration perspective on culture (Martin,
1992), which this literature reflects, assumes certain structural preconditions
such as a well-defined hierarchy and highly centralized decision-making.
These, as we have seen, are often not in place within knowledge-intensive
firms – particularly those that organize as adhocracies. It may therefore be
highly problematic to operationalize this approach to ‘culture management’
in a knowledge- intensive setting. The extent to which the leaders of such
firms are in a position to shape beliefs, particularly in such an informal orga-
nizational context, is in fact highly questionable.
Leaders of knowledge-intensive firms may therefore have to acknowledge
that knowledge workers will naturally hold a variety of beliefs, which cannot
necessarily be altered or subsumed within a single organizational value system.
This is referred to in Martin’s (1992) work as the fragmentation perspective on
culture. The fragmentation perspective suggests that culture is better viewed as
a metaphor rather than a variable – something an organization is rather than
something an organization has. From this perspective culture is only loosely
structured and partially shared, emerging dynamically as organizational members
experience each other, events and the organizational context over time.
The fragmentation perspective provides support competing and contradic-
tory value systems held by individuals across the firm, which is often the case
in knowledge-intensive firms populated by a highly skilled, diverse workforce.
This perspective acknowledges ambiguity, recognizing that within organiza-
tions individuals might experience a lack of clarity or simultaneously hold mul-
tiple meanings and beliefs. Lack of clarity can result from unclear structures,
fuzzy boundaries or imprecise goals. These are likely to be apparent within a
knowledge-intensive firm organized broadly as an adhocracy. It may well be
the case, then, that knowledge-intensive firms display cultural characteristics

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