Implications for Organizational Learning and Knowledge Creation

Thus far, we have discussed some salient institutional and cultural features of Asian business environments and organizational practices, namely the pervasiveness of guanxi networks, knowledge as power symbol, and leader-centric relationships. We have argued that these characteristics reflect an underlying collectivistic orientation and widespread acceptance of the need for unequal power and authority in leader–subordinate relationships. We shall now identify one positive and three negative implications for organizational learning and knowledge creation in Asia.

On the positive side, Asian organizations are more likely than Western ones to have sufficient patience and long-term orientation to nurture and build networks of organizational guanxi, as cooperative resources. Network-based models of knowledge development differ from mainstream knowledge-based theory, which features individual firms as basic units of analysis (Grant, 1996: 114) relying on internal ‘mechanisms for integrating specialized knowledge.’ Pervasive guanxi networks, and the intimate and intense inter-firm linkages that are associated with them, potentially support unique processes of inter-organizational knowledge transfer, combination, and co-creation (Easterby-Smith et al., 2008; Hong and Snell, 2009). Networks of an informal and particularistic nature provide unique opportunities for knowledge sharing, mutual help and knowledge combination between trusted others at interpersonal and inter-organizational level (Helfat and Raubitschek, 2000; Jonsson, 2008). Since knowledge creation requires a shared context, or ba (Nonaka and Konno, 1998), good guanxi can pave the way for a ‘shared space of emerging relationships’ (Nonaka et al., 2006: 1185), as a supportive social environment that is necessary for the emergence of shared meanings and knowledge repositories (Hong et al., 2006a). Furthermore, to the extent that networked relationships cut across conventional functional and proprietary boundaries, knowledge networking may facilitate cross-fertilization and thereby generate innovative ideas which may not otherwise be conceivable. Thus, for Asian multinationals, intimate linkages with selected partners may serve to diversify available knowledge and facilitate distinctive combinations of resources and capabilities (Mathews, 2006).

The first of three inhibitory social and/or cultural forces is the strong orientation to maintaining power differentials and hierarchical structures across Asia, which is likely to confine proprietary knowledge within elite cliques and thereby inhibit organizational learning. Since a key governance tool is information secrecy and manipulation (Westwood, 1997), there is a strong tendency to keep knowledge non-codified and undiffused (Boisot and Child, 1988; 1996). Without felt pressure to codify and diffuse knowledge that may be accessible outside immediate social networks, knowledge is likely to remain sticky (Szulanski, 1996), thus hindering implementation of the externalization and combination processes in the SECI model.

A second inhibitory factor for organizational learning is that deference to leaders may, for fear of reprisal, reduce subordinates’ courage to challenge ‘dominant logic’ by offering ideas for change or improvement (Prahalad and Bettis, 1986), thereby inhibiting double-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978). The role of ‘knowledge activists,’ regarded as important for kick-starting the knowledge creation spiral, thus appears to have no niche in Asian societies outside Japan (Von Krogh et al., 1997).

A third inhibitory factor is that leader-centricity confines knowledge sharing to vertical channels, serving to reduce the likelihood of knowledge creation through community-based learning, as practiced in exemplary Japanese knowledge-creating companies (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). ‘Didactic leaders’ (Silin, 1976) choose only to socialize and communicate with their inner circle of trusted subordinates, instead of participating in open dialog to facilitate knowledge combination and knowledge internalization involving all members of workplace learning communities. This particularistic and individual-based knowledge sharing approach tends to marginalize the voices of those people located at the periphery, and generates substantive intercultural communication barriers (Taylor and Osland, 2003). It also inhibits the incorporation and synthesis of diverse ideas from various sources within the firm, which in the Japanese model is a cornerstone of knowledge creation dialogs (Nonaka et al., 2006).

The three barriers identified above constitute substantial organizational-level boundary-crossing challenges to learning and knowledge creation practices in Asia (Easterby-Smith et al., 2008: 685). It is possible to overcome such barriers through structured interventions, facilitation and guidance, and through the harnessing of managerial benevolence, as indicated in some studies quoted earlier (Elsey and Leung, 2004; Elsey and Tse, 2007; Selamat and Choudrie, 2007; Yeo, 2006, 2007). However, doing so requires special attention to the need to motivate, support, and mobilize the use of appropriate boundary objects and knowledge repositories. For example, simple conceptual models, common jargon, and selected middle managers, who are willing to serve as exemplars and role models, may serve as common interfaces for enabling and encouraging the externalization, sharing, and internalization of tacit knowledge (Carlile, 2002; Hong et al., 2009; Star and Griesemer, 1989).

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