The Impact of Organisational Culture on Staff Knowledge Sharing in Higher Education

This study is rooted in the complex and rapidly changing convergence of higher education, information systems, and the new wave of social media enabled knowledge management (KM). The implementation of KM practices in higher education institutions (HEls) has been identified as being at low levels by a number of studies, and the consequent lack of staff knowledge sharing has a negative impact on overall performance. The research is based on an Action Research project and its main focus is to investigate how enterprise social networks (ESN) can enable staff knowledge sharing in virtual communities of practice in HEls. The conceptual model for the research identified a number of key antecedents which must be present for a knowledge sharing environment to emerge. One of these is having an organisational culture that makes peer sharing of knowledge just as valid as top-down sharing. Many of the organisational and individual barriers to knowledge sharing stem from the presence of an organisational culture that does not promote or encourage knowledge sharing, and this is evidenced in management practices. This study seeks to explore the extent of the impact that organisational culture has on the knowledge sharing environment, and to discover if management and staff are committed to overcoming the barriers in order to realise the benefits that having an open knowledge sharing culture brings. The key findings indicate that organisational culture and structure are major barriers to staff knowledge sharing and this problem is exacerbated in HEls by the existence of a divide between faculty and other staff. In addition, management have a major role to play in shaping the knowledge sharing environment and this can only be achieved through transformational leadership, driving change in the culture such that staff are suitably motivated to interact and collaborate with each other, and share knowledge freely. The study findings provide opportunities for educationalists to better understand the scope of employing ESN platforms for knowledge sharing and how organisational culture impacts on participation. In seeking to determine the drivers and barriers to sustainable use, this research should be of interest to practitioners and researchers undertaking similar projects.