George Bernard Shaw once said:
“If you have an apple and I have an
apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But
if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each
of us will have two ideas”
Knowledge sharing is one of
those concepts in action today that are changing the traditional structures of
firms and organizations. Gone are the days when accumulating bundles of
knowledge was enough to increase a person’s value in an organization. The world
economy is now driven by increased communication and collaboration. The rapid
rise of social media is an indicator of this global cultural shift. Knowledge
Sharing and consequently the effective management of accumulated knowledge is
now necessary in global companies. The
concept of a junior and a senior employee is now dependent on how much
knowledge a person has and how “effectively” a person is communicating this
knowledge. Also, the growth of this knowledge sharing culture has given rise to
a new form of capital called Knowledge Capital. It is an intangible asset,
which now carries more value than other commonly recognized tangible assets.
Pakistan is an interesting country with regards to knowledge
management. Traditionally, we have
not been a knowledge sharing culture. The teacher-disciple concept is still
prevalent and new employees are generally discouraged from sharing knowledge
and opinion. Although this does not imply that these traditional structures are
not changing at all, but the need for change has to be highlighted. In a paper
written by Peter Mikulecky and Mohammed Saeed Lodhi, the authors emphasized
the need for our burgeoning private educational sector especially the
universities to take a lead in promoting knowledge management in Pakistan since
these universities are developing the managers and leaders of tomorrow
therefore to instill knowledge management principles in them is vital to a
productive and efficient Pakistani economy. Also the role of information
technology in disseminating knowledge is an important one and Pakistan’s
software industry is more than capable of meeting this challenge but unless
knowledge sharing and its management is
not appreciated by our companies then we will consequently lag behind other
developing nations.
Pakistan can take a leaf out of Japan’s economic concept
which promotes the idea of strong corporate networks i.e. keiretsu.
Companies can work together to achieve common goals. This concept apart from
being applied in Japan also has been applied in west as well where AOL has been
known to work very closely with SUN Micro. This effective concept can be
applied in Pakistan too under the supervision of government; the industries can
collaborate with each other and share knowledge through knowledge portals or
other mechanisms but that requires the heads of our institutions to take the
matter seriously. Nepotism, ineffective economic planning, an environment of
distrust and resistance to change the traditional power structures has led to
an inefficient Pakistani economy that is finding hard to catch up with the pace
of other growing economies. This inefficient economy then leads to a brain
drain in which its professionals leave the country for greener pastures.
The problem with Pakistan is that no one is serious in
taking steps to improve our economy, an economy that is anything but built on collaboration
and knowledge sharing. The problem lies not only with its institutional heads
but it is intrinsic to our culture. Let us call spade a spade and accept the
fact that there are aspects of our culture that are hampering our growth. Educational institutions might have increased
tenfold in number, the number of PhD’s might have mushroomed but has that
resulted in an efficient economy? In
order to keep pace with the global changes we have to shed certain aspects of
our culture. The repressive environment and colonial ethics must now be thrown
out of the window. In that regards knowledge sharing can only thrive if the
hanging swords of unemployment, demotion and ridicule are removed from an
employee’s mind. Change has to happen and it should start from the top.
