The third type of culture is the networked which contains a high sociability, but a low solidarity. This category contains people who place greater value on loyalty to their colleagues, who are also friends rather than to the company itself. This does not mean this type of company cannot be successful, for example, Goffee and Jones believes that Unilever is a networked organisation (1996). Senior managers were encouraged to develop close personal ties through the process of internal conferences, training courses and social events. Frequently relocating young mangers to other business areas and countries, this process enabled the company to understand the local markets. Unilever were able to maintain success by promoting a culture of diversity, attracting staff from wide backgrounds and nationalities and who were able to establish personal friendships with colleagues in other countries, thus enabling a support network of sharing knowledge and common themes. However by the mid 1990’s, Unilever had to change its emphasis on commitment to group goals as well as personal, when fiercely challenged by highly solidarity companies like Procter & Gamble and L’Oreal (Murphy, 2005, pg 201)
The fourth cultural category is the fragmented organisation, which is defined as having both low sociability and low solidarity. Contained in this category would be ‘Virtual companies’, where there is limited personal contact between staff and work largely autonomously. Other companies contained in this category would be legal or consulting companies where senior management (i.e. business partners) operate on their own and maintain little social interaction with work colleagues and organisational strategies.
Unhappy situations in the work environment can also impact on the culture and can move the work environment from a networked type culture to a fragmented organisation, thus creating a disharmony and dissatisfaction among employees.
Knowledge is now a company’s/organisations greatest asset for competitiveness in today’s economy (Harrison and Kessels, 2004). Furthermore, Kessels believes that the concept of knowledge is “the ability for an organisation to obtain relevant information, creating new knowledge with this information and then applying this knowledge to improve and renew processes, products and services” (2001). While acknowledging the importance of the role of knowledge, the process of sharing knowledge can result in a range of threats and risks, which if not managed or controlled may result in knowledge being shared to your competitor. To understand this risk, it is important to examine William’s (2006) framework for analysing and managing intellectual capital and knowledge (Figure 6.0).
Figure 6.0 Intellectual Capital Framework
The use or gathering of knowledge is not only used to inform people or companies, it can enable a company to strategise decisions or as Saint-Onge and Armstrong states “knowledge is the capability to take effective action” (as cited in Williams, 2006). Knowledge has the opportunity to become the new currency of success and there is a greater pressure for companies/organisations to better manage their knowledge or risk losing market share/revenue to their competitors who can be better at managing their own intellectual capital.
The key risk with the knowledge management and competitive intelligence relationships is that they both have different agendas and their objectives move in opposite directions when knowledge is developed and shared. For example, Rothberg and Erickson (2005) believe that when companies/organisations establish and facilitate knowledge sharing, the knowledge management risk (i.e. loss of knowledge) decreases when the optimal level of knowledge sharing is exceeded, as outlined in Figure 6.1.
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