Creating a Knowledge Sharing Environment in Pakistan

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.