Abstract
In this paper, the authors discuss knowledge management, with a focus on knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing is dependent on trust and cooperation, which are elements of organizational culture. One specific aspect of organizational culture is of particular interest for knowledge sharing. This aspect consists of values, beliefs and atmosphere that characterize common mental space accepted by knowledge workers which affect behavior and readiness to share knowledge. This aspect of organizational culture is called collaborative climate and can be described as the 'permeability' of the human infrastructure for knowledge sharing. Collaborative climate in an organization can be considered as an environment that provides support to knowledge workers to create new knowledge that will be translated into a value, which will become competitive advantage of an organization. A questionnaire for assessing two dimensions of the collaborative climate: Organizational Culture and Employee Attitude was used as an instrument in this research. The main research questions in this paper are: 1) Is there a statistically significant difference between attitudes towards collaborative climate of managers and employees? 2) Is there a statistically significant difference between attitudes towards collaborative climate in capital intensive and knowledge intensive organizations? Research hypotheses emerged from the main research questions. The survey was conducted in order to answer research questions. Data collection was carried out in 2016 throughout the territory of the Republic of Serbia. The sample in this research consisted of 114 managers from 78 randomly selected SMEs from the database of the National Agency for Regional Development. Afterwards, 647 employees were surveyed from those same companies, and in total 761 valid responses were collected. Principal component analysis was applied to the data. In order to check for statistically significant differences, factor scores were tested using Leven’s homogeneity test of variance and t-test. Data analysis indicated the existence of statistically significant differences between employee and managers attitudes in their assessment of collaborative climate in capital intensive and knowledge intensive organizations.
Highlights
The importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the process of consolidating the economies of countries that are exposed to the processes of transition from industrial economy to the knowledge economy, ownership and social transition is unquestionable
Results of the analysis within hypothesis H2.10 point to the interesting conclusion that top executives from Capital Intensive Organizations (CIO) sector assess Organizational Culture significantly higher than top executives from Knowledge Intensive Organization (KIO) sector
Given that top executives define organizational culture in every organization, this indicates that the top executives from CIO sector do not focus on Employee Attitude (Figure 2b)
Summary
The importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the process of consolidating the economies of countries that are exposed to the processes of transition from industrial economy to the knowledge economy, ownership and social transition is unquestionable. Bearing in mind that SMEs make up the majority of enterprises, it clearly follows that the measures and policies that have been undertaken to achieve the EU’s strategic goal are aimed at SMEs. in 2005 in the revised Lisbon Strategy, the Council of Europe adopted the "Integrated guidelines and specific areas for priority actions" (European Committee of the Regions, 2019) among which are: greater investment in knowledge and innovation, unlocking business potential, especially for SMEs. In 1996 OECD report it was argued that the economies of member states were increasingly based on knowledge and information (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2019). New topics and questions sprouted in regards to the implications of different characteristics of knowledge as a basic resource, compared to capital as the basic resource of an industrial economy In response to this challenge, emerged Knowledge Management (KM). Given that the vast majority of initiatives in these processes depend on knowledge sharing, this becomes the most important aspect within KM
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