272 Al-Shammari
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Overall KM Strategy
There was a need to formulate organization-wide formal KM strategy and programs
for learning best practices and for the development of new projects. The KCRM initiative
at GTCOM seemed to be created and used on the basis of “technology push,” introduced
through vendors, rather than “market pull,” as a mere response to real business need. The
KCRM technology components were driving, instead of enabling, the KCRM strategy
and its KPIs. One manager admitted that “suppliers try to push their new products and
then there is stage of filtering, studying, and analyzing where there are subjectivities and
different opinions.” The development of an organization-wide strategy for the genera-
tion, sharing, distribution, and utilization of knowledge is becoming imperative for
GTCOM’s continued success in today’s competitive market.
Although it can be said that GTCOM did a good job in putting up the required ICT
infrastructure in place, however, it did not develop a robust business solution in terms
of knowledge processes that allowed exploiting the information provided by the imple-
mented system. One manager explained, “I don’t even think we have the process to look
at the customer from A to Z. I think the mistake maybe [GTCOM] has made is that we have
been very good in putting up the system, but even the underlying process of capturing
the needs of customers hasn’t been well though of and hasn’t been implemented
properly.”
Another manager argued, “Unfortunately, this is what I have to say that with
respect to EDW: we have done the systems and IT side very well, but the other side of
it — the knowledge aspect of it — exploiting that knowledge, exploiting that source, and
also the skills aspect of the people, there is quite long way to go.”
Corporate Culture
Corporate culture is widely held to be the major inhibitor or facilitator for creating
and leveraging knowledge assets in organizations. Low-trust cultures constrict knowl-
edge flow, and companies that have conducted organizational transformation or
downsizing, such as GTCOM, face a particular problem in this regard. These companies
need to rebuild trust levels in their culture before they can expect individuals to share
expertise freely without worrying about the impact of this sharing on employees’ value
to GTCOM. Such changes require paying considerable attention to the supporting norms
and behavioral practices that manifest trust as an important organizational value (Long
& Fahey, 2000).
Since 2002, there has been more encouragement for internal knowledge sharing
through committees as a result of transformation from a product-centered to a customer-
centered business, and from bureaucratic to democratic management. This may be due
to the fact that GTCOM will no longer be able to enjoy its monopoly in the market, and
will have to improve its competitive position through organizational transformation and
capitalizing on its core competencies, namely, KAC.
However, monitoring business pressures that were supposed to be drivers for
knowledge creation, diffusion, and application did not seem to have helped in total
elimination of knowledge hoarding that fears competition and leak of information. One
manager argued, “GTCOM has certain visions along that side [KCRM], it is a big project,
it takes a long time, needs cultural changes and stuff like that. So that is the challenge
we are facing right now.”