[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

e-Business Strategies for Virtual Organizations
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church group, an alumni group, a Rotary Club group and so on.
In everyday living, we take these different community groups
and their different perceptions and expectations for granted, and
we change our activities and behaviour accordingly – often
without realizing it. But in a business context it makes sense to
pay particular attention to these communities, their rules, and
shared assumptions and knowledge.
Community is largely about collaboration and, in the context of
our interests as system managers, will generally but not
necessarily centre on a common business interest. Community
knowledge comes inextricably bound up with culture, which is
a specific shared knowledge area in which the movement and
transformation of knowledge occurs.
In our discussions, the term ‘culture’ has a broad meaning. We
use this term, not merely in the narrow sense that we talk of as
national cultures, Asian or Western culture, but to refer to the
shared values, perceptions and concepts within any group.
These shared values, beliefs and ways of evaluating the worth of
activities and so on are extremely important for understanding
what can be done within an organization or community. In this
sense we refer to a company’s culture, a government culture, a
youth culture and so on.
It is becoming increasingly recognized that it is useful to be aware
of and regard culture as a knowledge asset within the information
space. We, as managers, must recognize the place and value of
technological and organizational systems as extensions of
culture. This community knowledge is place and time dependent,
socially constructed and defined in terms of what is understood
as useful and supportive within that context.
Organizational tensions and paradoxes will arise from collisions
of cultures as different communities interpret ‘knowledge’ in
different contexts and at different rates of learning. Cycles of
social learning take place and it is this process of ‘knowing’ that
is of greatest importance to the organization rather than a static
abstract snapshot of knowledge.
Three particularly important characteristics of community
knowledge as opposed to personal knowledge are:
1 The degree to which it can be codified and so move from tacit
to explicit.
2 The degree to which it can be generalized or abstracted.
3 The degree to which it can be shared or diffused throughout
and beyond the organization.