11 April 2008

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How Organizational Culture Impacts Project Knowledge Management

The benefits of knowledge transfer have long been recognized in project-based organizations.  Nevertheless, not all such organizations do an effective job of managing the flow of knowledge in projects.

The ability to manage knowledge includes the capacity to create, value, absorb and share project-related information—and these are largely aspects of an organization’s culture. 

An article entitled “Knowledge Transfer in Project-Based Organizations: An Organizational Culture Perspective,” by Mian M. Ajmal of the University of Vaasa, Finland, and Kaj U. Koskinen, PhD, of Tampere University of Technology, Pori, Finland, in the March, 2008 issue of the Project Management Journal, identifies some cultural obstacles to knowledge transfer and suggests ways to improve this process in project-based organizations.

Obstacles to Knowledge Transfer. The authors observe that technology can accomplish the communication of existing knowledge, but only human social interaction can result in the creation and sharing of new knowledge.

Consequently, they say that the biggest obstacles to knowledge transfer are essentially failings of organizational culture. Here are four such obstacles the article mentions:

1. Time and budget constraints. Due to these limitations, as soon as one project is completed, project managers often recruit team members for new project duties. As a result, it is often impossible for all team members to review project outcomes together and collect or analyze the knowledge and lessons they gained from them.

2. Resistance to talking about mistakes. Many people are unwilling to discuss failures and mistakes openly. This prevents an honest analysis of project errors, which could benefit the organization and future projects.

3. Low motivation. Proper review of a project can take place only if all team members are motivated to participate in an exchange of knowledge. Often, however, individual employees aren’t interested in the organizational benefits of knowledge transfer because they don’t believe it would benefit them personally.

4. Lack of leadership. Often, organizational leaders fail to communicate the importance of project knowledge management. Consequently, the necessary processes may be omitted from project planning.

Tips for Improving Knowledge Transfer. The authors discuss a number of ways to achieve better knowledge transfer including the following ideas:

1. Databases. Many organizations try to facilitate knowledge management by using databases on customers, products and services as a tool or platform for sharing and distributing information. This approach, however, only succeeds when supported by an effective managerial structure.

2. Team culture. Project managers can work specifically to create a team culture that promotes knowledge transfer processes such as decision making and conflict resolution. These managers address communication issues among all the cultures touched by the project, including subcultures or departments within the organization and cultures of external organizations such as clients, contractors or community groups.

3. Minimizing conflicts. Managers sensitive to cultural issues can help avoid misunderstandings and conflicts that might arise in a project. For example, there are differences between a research and development culture and that of a standardized delivery project, and it could become necessary to take such differences into account.

Effective knowledge management in a project-based business means creating the kind of organization that fosters the creation and sharing of knowledge. It must transcend multiple cultures to produce a single project culture that makes use of collective experience and information to benefit future projects.

Project managers interested in improving their organizations’ performance in these areas will find much to consider in the full article in the Project Management Journal.

PMI’s Project Management Journal is a peer-reviewed journal “dedicated to advancing the understanding of project, program, and portfolio management through empirical investigation and theoretical research.”

To access Project Management Journal online, logon to PMI.org, click the ‘Resources’ tab and use the left navigation panel to reach ‘Publications’, then ‘Project Management Journal’.

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