Individual and social barriers for knowledge databases

Knowledge Management (KM) is one of the hot topics in information systems. The scopes of many IS projects include the support of systematic, and deliberate knowledge building, renewal, and application. But information technology in many KM-Initiatives is not the key success factor, because people restrain to share and transfer knowledge openly due to individual and social barriers. IS professionals must be aware of these cultural issues to be able to cope with these impediments. The barriers and some countermeasures are discussed in this paper.