KM and culture in South-East Asia

Below is the argumentation I wrote up for my PhD dissertation subject, and submitted to Dr Farhad.

When an organization decides to embark on a KM initiative, several elements need to be in place for the initiative to be successful. Alignment with corporate strategy, management support and involvement, adequate resources and an organizational culture that encourages knowledge sharing are often listed as critical factors. Even if all these factors are in place, it comes in the end down to whether the individuals in the organization actually use the tools, technologies and approaches that make up the KM initiative.

At the individual level there are different factors that determine to what extent each employee will participate. Some key elements are incentives, peer and boss relationships, sufficient training and individual values. The adoption of new technologies has been modeled in the research literature (models like TAM, UTAUT or task-technology fit) and focus on the ease of use and the perceived personal usefulness. If an individual evaluates that a new technology is easy to use, and sees the benefit of using it, he or she will have an increased intention to use and an actual increased use of the technology. In other words, the individual will actively use the KM technology and contribute to the KM initiative.

The concept of “ease of use” does not only refer to the purely technical aspect (is a software easy to navigate, intuitive and visually appealing ?) but also whether the individual feels “comfortable” exchanging information through the technology platform. The individual’s “comfort”, in this context, depends on values, learning preferences and styles of interaction with others in the organization. These are influenced, if not determined, by national cultural norms and societal orientations.

Eastern cultures (South-East Asia, Japan) are described at collectivistic, whereas western cultures (in particular the USA) are individualistic. In western countries, it would make sense to implement KM technologies that focus around the individual (expert blogs, data-mining, individual learning tools). Individuals in western cultures will easily adopt these technologies as they fit well with their personal and cultural values. In eastern countries, KM technologies that focus more on the interconnectedness of the knowledge in the organization (communities of practice, brainstorming, online chat) will better fit with the Asian collectivistic culture.

My thesis therefore posits that KM technologies that are aligned with national cultural traits will have a greater rate of adoption than those that are not. I intend to evaluate this in the context of Thailand.

This research is important because most KM technologies and tools are originating from western countries. Multi-national companies will often consider a standardized approach to the deployment of their KM initiative (which makes sense from the point of view of coherence and cost). If the main question of this thesis can be confirmed, it would give very valuable information to organizations on how they should adapt their KM rollout depending on the national cultural traits of the different countries they operate in.