The Study On Adaptation Of Knowledge Management Statrategy To Organizational Culture

In knowledge-based economy, knowledge of an organization constitutes the main source of its competency. Thus effectively managing knowledge with suitable strategy has become an intrinsic need. To choose suitable knowledge management (KM) strategy, one first needs to consider organizational culture (OC) that not only affects the choice of strategy but also is critical to the success of KM. Most previous studies on the relationship between OC and KM focused on the effectiveness of some specific OC on KM, but rarely examined how the KM strategy is adapted to OC and how their interaction affects the KM. Therefore, further investigating the influence mechanism of OC on KM and developing models reflecting how KM strategy is adapted to OC are of theoretical and practical importance.To overcome drawbacks of previous work, we conducted the study along the direction: OC—KM strategy—KM performance. We began with the influence of OC on the choice of KM strategy, utilized the theory of OC and KM strategy, analyzed the influence mechanism of OC on KM strategy within competing value framework (CVF), and found the correspondence among four types of OC and four types of KM strategies. Based on these results, we clarified the impact of the interactions between OC and KM strategies (four types of each), and discussed the effects of various types of OC on KM performance based on the effectiveness theory of OC on KM. Towards the end, the adjusting effect of KM strategy between OC and KM performance was found through comparison. We performed statistical analysis and hypothesis testing using SPSS software based on theoretical analysis, while the data were obtained from the questionnaires collected from 125 enterprises in China.Through theoretical and empirical studies, the main conclusions of this research are as follows: (1) OC has significant effects on the choice of KM strategy, and an organization tends to choose different KM strategy in different OC atmosphere. Clan culture leads to conservative Codification strategy. Similarly, Adhocracy culture leads to Personality strategy, Hierarchy culture leads to conservative Codification strategy, and Market culture leads to aggressive Codification strategy, respectively. (2) Specific combinations of OC and KM strategies may yield improved KM performance. From conclusion 1, further study revealed that choosing conservative Codification strategy in Clan culture improves KM performance. Similarly, choosing Personality strategy in Adhocracy culture, conservative Codification strategy in Hierarchy culture and aggressive strategy in Market culture, respectively, can also enhance KM performance. Comparing conclusions 1 and 2, we found that, in a particular culture, the selected strategy often improves KM performance. Note that this only provides general principle, and does not necessarily occur for individual cases in practice. (3) OC has significant effects on KM performance. Particularly, both Clan and Market culture can improve KM performance, while Adhocracy cannot and Hierarchy is not significant. By comparing conclusions 2 and 3, although each type of OC affects KM performance in different manner, we may introduce corresponding KM strategy in specific culture to adjust the influence of OC on KM performance, so that suitable combinations may result in better KM performance.Our work has made the following progress based on existing research. (1) Analyze the intrinsic influence mechanism of OC on the choice of KM strategy. Different from the traditional approach of adapting OC to KM, we advocated the opinion of choosing different KM strategy for various types of OC culture and verified this via empirical study. (2) Clarify the influence of the interaction between OC and KM strategy on KM performance. To reveal how KM strategy is adapted to OC, we investigated how the interaction between KM strategy and OC affect KM performance, which has not been studied in literature. (3) Further certify that KM strategy may effectively adjust the influence of OC on KM strategy, which illustrates the necessity of introducing appropriate KM strategy and is of practical importance.We believe that our study is helpful for comprehensive understanding of the relationship among OC, KM strategy and KM performance and thus of theoretical importance. Moreover, the practical importance is that the conclusions provide some guidance for enterprises when introducing suitable KM strategy. We also mentioned the restrictions of this work due to objective and subjective constraints, and some questions and issues that deserve further investigation in future.