Culture, Context, and Knowledge Management

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EDITORIAL PREFACE

Culture, Context, and Knowledge Management

Murray E. Jennex, Editor-in-Chief, IJKM Iryna Zakharova, National Technical University of Ukraine & San Diego State University, USA

Welcome to the second issue, second volume of the International Journal of Knowledge Management. In this issue we begin to tackle the issues of culture and context. Two invited articles, from Hart and Warne and from Usoro and Kuofie, are presented that explore frameworks for studying these issues. These papers present frameworks based on work in Australia and in Africa. The theme of culture is continued with our first research paper from Okunoye and Bertaux, who look at cultural impacts on knowledge management in India, The Gambia, and Nigeria. The last two research papers do not address culture but do focus on issues related to knowledge management systems. Stenmark and Lindgren explore knowledge maintenance issues by looking at systems in Sweden, and Chua and Lam look at issues involved in implementing knowledge management in a United States Army intelligence organization. The Chua and Lam paper is a teaching case study, and the authors are making available the teaching notes to readers who request them. Why consider culture and context? A previous editorial summarized the definition of knowledge management as the practice of selectively applying knowledge from previous experiences of decision-making to current and future decision making activities with the express purpose of improving the organization’s effectiveness. This was a consensus definition from the editorial review board that tells us what we are trying to do with

knowledge management. However, knowledge management is being applied in multinational, multicultural organizations and we are seeing issues in effectively implementing knowledge management in global and/or multicultural environments. Chan and Chau (2005) discuss a failure of knowledge management that was in part caused by organizational...