Why Do People Find Knowledge Sharing So Difficult in Their Professional Life?

Insecurity is the reason. If humans are insecure they would like to conceal whatever little knowledge they have. This is true not only in the professional scenario but in all walks of life. Large organizations know a lot of things, but they don’t always know what they know. Everyone benefits by sharing information.

It is the reason for the development of a concept known as knowledge management. It is the process of capturing and sharing a community’s collective expertise to fulfill its mission. It takes advantage of an organization’s most valuable asset — the collective expertise of its employees and partners. To implement knowledge management, how much does an organization need to change its culture?

Some people believe that a wholesale transformation is required in the way people work and act, but this is largely a myth. The fact is that successful knowledge management programs work with organizational cultures and behaviors, not against them. That is one reason people involved in knowledge management efforts prefer the term knowledge sharing.

One of the challenges of knowledge management is that of getting people to share their knowledge. Why should people give up their hard-won knowledge, when it is one of their key sources of personal advantage? In some organizations, sharing is natural. In others the old dictum "knowledge is power" reigns.

Copyright © 2010 Suprio Ghatak