Sharing knowledge, being different and working as a team

Knowledge-intensive work in modern global organisations is largely organised in teams or groups. Most of this work can be classified as knowledge creation with outcomes such as plans, contracts, proposals and analyses. Cooperating for knowledge-intensive work is recognised as a social process in which identification and organisational climate play an important role. Yet despite the mutual interdependence of members, their relations in teams are not necessarily closely knitted. Teams in multinational companies consist of members with different national, ethnic, functional and educational backgrounds, who are often situated at different locations, using a combination of means to communicate. These are not the most favourable conditions for an open way of exchanging knowledge and insights. On the other side, diversity in expertise is supposed to be a necessary condition for knowledge creation. It offers the requisite variety that is needed to cope with complex problems and the cognitive distance that is supposed to stimulate organisational learning. It is expected that identification of team members with their group can counterbalance the negative effects of diversity, while it can enforce the positive effect of task interdependence. This research is directed to the relations between social identification, diversity, interdependence and knowledge sharing in corporate teams. Social identification is an important issue since it is known as a builder of extra role behaviour in organisations. Diversity and interdependence are team features that shape the identification with a team. Social identification is considered as an important mediator between these independent variables and knowledge sharing as a dependent variable. The research has been carried out in a large beverage company with plants and agencies all over the world. A questionnaire has been used with validated scales. The research data stem from a sample of 169 respondents from 30 teams. A strong relation between knowledge sharing and social identification was found, while diversity of teams plays an intriguing role in stimulating and inhibiting knowledge sharing between team members. Knowledge Management Research & Practice (2009) 7, 4-14. doi:10.1057/kmrp.2008.32