In the words of Peter Engstrom, Vice President for Corporate Knowledge Creation at
Science Applications International Corporation, a research and engineering company
that helps organizations involved with KM, “You have to systematically embed knowledge
sharing into the culture as opposed to overlaying it on top. You can’t bolt it on and
force people to use it” [68]. The managing partner at Knowledge Transformation Partners,
a KM consultancy firm based in New York City echoed this view: “The biggest
misconception that IT leaders make is that knowledge management is about technology.
. . . Usually people begin a KM project by focusing on the technology needs,
whether they want a database or a portal. But the key is people and process” [48].
Many KM projects are specifically aimed at developing a knowledge-intensive culture
by encouraging and aggregating behaviors such as knowledge sharing (as opposed to
hoarding) [20]. “Perhaps the most significant hurdle to effective KM is organizational
culture,” observed Gold et al. [34, p. 189] in a study that identified a construct called
cultural infrastructure to measure organizational support for KM and found that it
contributed significantly to organizational effectiveness (a success measure) via a twostage
structural model. To define and investigate the influence of organizational factors
on KM success, we look at research studies that define culture and how cultural factors
influence organizational performance.