Review: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Knowledge Management edited by David J. Pauleen

Abstract

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Knowledge Management edited by David J. Pauleen. Westport, CT and London: Libraries Unlimited, 2007. 259 pp. ISBN 1-59158-331-4. Knowledge management (KM), an emerging field of research garnering significant attention both within and outside of Information Studies (IS), is a disciplinary borderland. KM draws upon understandings of information structures and information seeking culled from IS research in the name of business management. The field focuses on solutions for understanding, controlling, and preserving that elusive business asset: knowledge. Because knowledge is a theoretical good with complicated practical implications, understanding knowledge management requires mixing concepts of cultural and social theory with practice-oriented approaches. David Pauleen has compiled a book of essays which successfully navigates this mixed territory, integrating theory and practice while drawing attention to overlooked issues of cultural diversity in knowledge management. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Knowledge Management is an engaging blend of theories of culture and its relationship to knowledge, analyses of cultural barriers to successful knowledge management in business and research environments, and case studies in knowledge management across cultural borders. The volume’s convincing argument is that knowledge production, dissemination, transfer, and organization are all reliant upon socially-constructed cultures: local, organizational, and national. Therefore, managers who wish to foster successful knowledge management projects—whether cross-disciplinary research or improved business practices in a multi-national corporation—cannot afford to ignore the multitude of cultures within their organizations. The anthology begins with two contrasting articles that develop complex and sensitive (although quite different) definitions of “culture,” one of the most difficult parts of writing a book on such a topic. David Pauleen et al.’s “Exploring the Relationship between National and Organizational Culture, and Knowledge Management” provides the most nuanced definition of culture, setting the tone for the rest of the volume. The authors focus on national cultures without ignoring or obscuring the importance of regional and ethnic cultures to KM. They argue that all cultures produce tacit epistemologies or theories of knowledge, which then affect cultural cognitive processes. Because of these cultural ways of knowing, KM systems must take into account the knowledge communities that will be involved. Peter Murphy’s contrasting “The Art of Systems: The Cognitive-Aesthetic Culture of Portal Cities and the Development of Meta-Cultural Advanced Knowledge Economies” views culture as reliant upon the design and aesthetics among which people live, particularly the “pattern thinking” which emerges from the aesthetic forms of the city (p. 35). The author argues that the culture of city