Posted by Tarun Satiya on September 20, 2001 at 12:28:21:

In Reply to: KM with the 'principal-agent' issue posted by Akhil Shahani on September 20, 2001 at 04:48:50:

Hi Akhil

A tricky situation indeed! One finds it tough to bring around people to share knowledge within one's workgroup/organisation, here you are talking of knowledge sharing in a principal-agent relationship! There definitely has to be some incentive for an individual to participate in knowledge sharing, and by "incentive" I do not mean just the monetary incentive - it could be anything - recognition from other, emotional self-satisfaction!

Monetary incentives do work to jump-start contributions, but as a long term strategy they may not be effective. As somebody had pointed out earlier in this forum, that if the economic gains of not-sharing knowledge exceed those of sharing knowledge, people would desist from sharing. You can't always be 'buying' knowledge from your own employees all the time.

The problem needs to be addressed at a much more fundamental level. Are your processes so designed that it is but necessary for people to collaborate, do you have your organisational structures created which fosters collaboration, are the systems well instituted to ensure discipline ... and it could at times even be about how is the office layout - does it allow free, inhibited communication/collaboration.

So to get around to address the cultural issues, one may need to look at whole gamut of issues. unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

In my organisation (a professional services firm), at least due to the nature of business, the whole organisational structuring, business processes, etc., people do need to collaborate with each other ... if they have to survive in the environment. We did play around with incentives ... but more from the point of getting people into the habbit of knowledge sharing. And many a times it is the 'disincentive' of not sharing knowledge is what works more than the 'incentive'. "Sticks do the work, where carrots fail"! ;-)

---

Follow Ups:

---

Click Here to Post Follow Up in New Forums

    Knowledge Management Think Tank (New)

  

 Subject: 

Message: