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MANAGING KNOWLEDGE ACROSS BOUNDARIES

    

 (Picture extracted from https://www.cleanpng.com/png-integrative-learning-medical-education-new-learnin-6409939/)

     In contemporary world, as globalization is inevitable and intensify, organizations have to face growing new challenges to sustain and consolidate their competitiveness. A wider range of forms of international working become possible (Suutari and Brewster, 2009). The management of human resources is confronted with new issues in cross-national settings where different cultural, political, economic, and legal systems are involved. Brewster et al. (2005) has identified key challenges faced by international human resources management (IHRM) are information exchange and knowledge transfer as two of the most prominent drivers of change and moreover most failures observed in knowledge management initiatives are attributed to a lack of integration.

    Knowledge integration can be defined as the purposeful combination of specialized and complementary knowledge to achieve specific tasks (Berggren, Brusoni and Van de Ven, 2016). Further, it is becoming increasingly important for organizations facing rapidly changing institutional environments, globalized markets, and fast-paced technological developments. The need for knowledge integration is driven by knowledge specialization and its geographic and organizational distribution in the global economy. In global competition, the successful management of knowledge integration underpins firms' ability to innovate, generate profit, grow and, ultimately, survive.

    Organizations continuously face environmental and technological uncertainties, which challenge their capabilities to adapt and respond. Human knowledge increases constantly, but in firms and other organizations exposed to numerous different trends and changes such as in the natural environment, technologies, social systems, political institutions, demographic conditions, uncertain and ambiguous (Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001; Tell, 2004). To survive and prosper, firms need to absorb, assess, and integrate new knowledge continuously, which can result in incremental or radical changes to their practices, structures, and control systems. Yet how diverse experts come together, overcome differences in understanding and interests, and create value remains areas in need of both theoretical and practical advances. Pursuing these advances is both daunting and worthwhile (Edmond, 2001). In this endeavor Edmond (2001) has identified that diversity in organizational behavior provide educating for all practice disciplines is about to undergo a paradigm shift whereby the value of practical education and experience will be better understood, more rigorously analyzed and integrated with propositional knowledge in the construction of personal professional knowledge and identity. It can be related to cross disciplinary position to the present problems of skills deficits.

    Communities of Practice have the potential to significantly enhance collaboration within a professional practice. In globally dispersed organizations, the technological, managerial, and procedural support become even more important ( Bayraksan et al, 2007). Communities of practice are more than networks and it is instrumented through which collective knowledge can be created, held and transferred (Handley et al, 2006). Key characteristics of a learning organization include the collective capacity of its members to capitalize on experience gained, to share knowledge, to acquire new knowledge, to innovate, to solve problems, particularly sensitive ones, instead of seeking to cover them up (Levitt and March, 1988). The integrative model of the ‘Learning Mix’ and its four different dimensions have been introduced in managing international inter-organizational communities of practice (Bertrand, Fabrice, and Alexandre 2009).

Strategic:        The identity and management of the firm’s knowledge domain, that is, both its existing knowledge and the knowledge it needs to acquire to maintain or improve its competitive advantage.

Technological:           The management of information systems, particularly tools devoted to knowledge sharing.

Organizational:          Implementation and management of an organization whose mode of functioning enhances knowledge creation and sharing.

Identity:          Development of a learning identity, which requires, in many cases, a complex approach involving the reassessment and the remodeling of values and reasoning processes.

    Organizational knowledge is the capability members of an organization have developed to draw distinctions in the process of carrying out their work, in particular concrete contexts, by enacting sets of generalizations of evolved collective understandings. Knowledge management is the dynamic process of turning an non-reflective practice into a reflective one by elucidating the rules guiding the activities of the practice, by helping give a particular shape to collective understandings, and by facilitating the emergence of heuristic knowledge.

Reference:

R. Sparrow, (2009), Hand book of international Human Resources Management, [e library] United Kingdom: John & Sons ltd.

Levitt, B., and March, J.G. (1988) Organizational learning. Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 14 (1988)  319–340.Available from https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.14.080188.001535 [Access on 15th April 2022].

Brewster,C.,Sparrow,P.R. and Harris,H.(2005) Towards a new model of globalizing HRM. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16 (6) 949–970. Available from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585190500120590 [Access on 15th April 2022].

Edmond, C.B. (2001) A new paradigm for practice education. Nurse education today, , Volume 21, (Issue 4) 251-259. Available from  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0260691700905434 [Access on 15th April 2022].     

Edmondson, A. (1999) Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, vol 44, 350–383. Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2307/2666999 [Access on 15th April 2022].

Tsoukas, H. (2001) What is Organizational Knowledge?Journal of Management Studies,Vol 38( Issue7)  973-993.Available from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6486.00268 [Access on 15th April 2022].

Bertrand, M., Fabrice L., and Alexandre P., (2009) Managing Knowledge Across Boundaries: A Learning Mix Perspective     

Bayraksan, G., Lin, W., Son, Y. and Wysk, R. (2007) Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization. [online]Miami :Marc Resnick. Available from  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242292489_Communities_of_Practice_Knowledge_Management_for_the_Global_Organization. [Access on 12th March 2022].

Handley, K., Sturdy, A., Fincham, R. and Clark, T. (2006) Within and beyond communities of practice: Making sense of learning through participation, identity and practice. Journal of Management Studies, 43 (3), 641–53.  Available from  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2006.00605.x [Access on 15th April 2022].            

Berggren,C. Brusoni, S. Van de Ven, A. (2016) Managing knowledge integration across boundaries,    Oxford Scholarship Online.

Edmondson, C. Harvey, F. (2017) Cross boundary teaming for innovation: Integrating research on team and knowledge in organizations. Human Resources Management Review, 28(2018)347-360. Available from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053482217300219 [Access on 15th April 2022].

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