Cultural Competencies Of Knowledge Management

The idea that organizational knowledge constitutes valuable strategic capital is increasingly popular nowadays. In order to maintain their position and to be competitive, organizations need to generate, collect, share, and exploit organizational knowledge efficiently and effectively. The effective handling of such knowledge is ever more widely recognized as a significant factoring of competitiveness. The first organizational efforts to manage knowledge focused on information technology solutions. These IT solutions, although important to knowledge management, often failed to achieve their objectives because organizations did not consider cultural factors critical to effective knowledge management. In this paper we explore the characteristic features of national and organisational cultures' impacts on knowledge management and competitiveness. We take on board Trompenaars's insight concerning national and organizational culture. Following our theoretical exploration of national and organizational culture, we report the findings of two researches, which have revealed the relationship between knowledge management, cultural characteristics, and competitiveness. Finally, we present the implications of our argument by focusing on the links between knowledge management and culture. We do this in order to show, that cultural characteristics are not only determinant factors of competitiveness but also of knowledge management, which is a key factor of competitiveness.