Networking Enables a Learning Culture

Learning organization is a new buzz word for corporate America. To be an effective learning organization, there needs to be a mechanism for knowledge capture and more importantly knowledge sharing. In the world with increasingly over-saturated information, information capture means little unless the information is shared, internalized by the receiving party and ultimately used by the person for future decision making. 

Effective knowledge sharing does not just happen naturally. It demands connection, trust, and shared language. In a study done twenty years ago, Nahapiet and Goshal (The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1998) proposed a three-dimensional model of social capital for knowledge sharing:

• Individuals must perceive themselves to be part of a network (structural dimension)
• A sense of trust and mutual obligation must be developed across this network (relational dimension)
• The members of the network must have a common interest or share common understanding of issues facing the organizations (cognitive dimension).

While having the right tools and infrastructure, which are important especially in large organization, can enable knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing would only happen if organization fosters the right culture for networking and collaboration. 

It is a social process by its core. 

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