Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

Communication in Global Organizational Learning

At the base of all theories concerning organizational learning, whether from the information processing perspective (e.g. Huber, 1991) or the social construction perspective (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Cook and Yanow, 1993), lies the assumption that communication must occur in order for knowledge to be created or disseminated. When examining organizational learning in MNCs, it is particularly important to examine the impact of culture on communication because of the need to share knowledge across individuals and groups located in highly divergent cultural environments. Regardless of the type of knowledge to be transferred (tacit versus explicit; operational versus strategic) or the manner of transfer (archival versus verbal; experiential versus cognitive), the communication process will be affected by culture. If MNCs can fully leverage all the knowledge that they have within their global networks, they will greatly enhance their ability to respond to environmental changes and increase performance (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 2000). Therefore, the impact of intercultural communication on knowledge transfer merits attention.

Organizational learning theorists usually include within their definitions of the phenomenon the capability of organizations not only to create new knowledge, but also to transfer it (Senge, 1990; Garvin, 1993; Huber, 1991). Huber calls this ‘information distribution,’ and observes that it is ‘a determinant of both the ...