Changing local to global: finding knowledge sharing barriers between individual motivation factors and organizational culture in virtual team environment

Knowledge and knowledge management are considered as one of the key factors for a competitive advantage. Knowledge sharing is one of the most essential parts of the knowledge management process. Its relation to organizational culture, individual motivation factors, virtual teams and knowledge sharing barriers create an interesting equation together. Each of these concepts has been extensively studied in recent years. Companies are organizing their work around global projects and teams. Nowadays, cross-border virtual teams are seen as a source for knowledge creation. These teams are usually coming from different cultural backgrounds and speaking different languages. However the complexity of international projects and temporary nature set some challenges in order to achieve project success.

The objective of this study was to increase understanding how organization culture and individual motivation are related to knowledge sharing and its barriers in virtual teams and what kind of role they have in global organization transformation. This thesis is conducted as a quantitative study in a large multinational company. However, the target group was relatively small and carefully selected. The empirical part data consist of 64 people from 12 countries

working in tens of different virtual teams globally. A theoretical framework was constructed on the basis of an empirical background and a literature review. To fulfill an empirical part, a Likert scaled semi-structured survey was applied with the possibility of open comments.

The results indicated that a few characteristics of organizational culture influence directly or indirectly to knowledge sharing barriers. In this particular case, employees felt that it is hard to find the person with the knowledge that is needed and it is also hard to find appropriate documents and solutions. These correlate with the opinion that different units cannot learn from each other very well. Also, extrinsic motivation components correlate with the knowledge sharing barriers, such as lack of time and or support and tools for knowledge sharing. In this case, knowledge sharing barriers are considered as dependent variables and motivational factors as well as cultural aspects are considered as explanatory factors. In the end, some theoretical and managerial implications are provided as well as suggestions for future research.