With the explosive growth of technologies that facilitate the sharing of information

13The knowledge economy is an “economy of sharing” (Styhre, 2002) and knowledge sharing is therefore an important component of knowledge intensive companies. Knowledge sharing has increasingly become a subject of great interest to KM academicians and practitioners. An organisation’s ability to leverage knowledge is highly dependent on its people sharing knowledge. In the KM paradigm knowledge sharing at the individual level is a basic step toward creating organisational knowledge and a better process of sharing knowledge therefore benefits the firm (Choi et al, 2008; (Martensson, M., 2000). Sharing knowledge involves “uncapping our thinking processes for others in the present moment” and to do so organisations need to know who will use this information and for what purpose (Lang, 2001).

14Knowledge really only comes into being through the practices of sharing and the value of knowledge can only be realised if it can be effectively transferred between individuals (Gupta et al, 2000). It is a “remarkable substance” and unlike other resources, most forms of knowledge grow rather than diminish with use. Styhre (2002, 232) says “It is not consumed but shared, given away and received”.

15Sharing employee’s expertise and skills provides opportunities for mutual learning and contributes to organisational capabilities to innovate. It is therefore important to understand how individuals share knowledge within their groups and across organisational units or hierarchical levels (Choi et al, 2008) Knowledge management systems must connect people and enable them to think together and to take time to articulate and share information and insight they know are useful to others in their community. The real promise of KM is therefore that it connects people to people and enables them to share what expertise and knowledge they have at the moment, given that cutting edge knowledge is always changing. The goal is to connect questions to answers, or to people who can help find answers (Lang, 2001) and a knowledge management system must include a way to find people based on their skill and area of expertise; who has knowledge and to identify where knowledge resides and which knowledge needs to be shared with whom, how and why (Gupta et al, 2000).

16Effective knowledge-sharing and learning require cultural change, new management practices, senior management commitment and technological support. According to Choi et al (2008), the enablers that facilitate willingness to share are trust, expertise and rewards – both extrinsic and intrinsic. If organisational members believe in other members’ expertise and skills, the intention to share individual knowledge increases. Furthermore, the quality of the KM system has a significant influence on knowledge sharing intention. Martensson (2000) refers to a study suggesting that part of the introduction process of recruits should involve sharing their knowledge and experience as well as passing on the experience of predecessors to these new employees. Finally, Ndlela and du Toit (2001) insist on understanding the economic consequences of KM practices in order to place greater explicit value on knowledge.

17Knowledge management is described as the management of corporate knowledge to improve a range of organisational performance characteristics leading to enterprises that are more ’intelligent acting’ (Gupta et al, 2000) and ‘innovative’ (Martensson, M., 2000). There are nearly as many definitions of competitive intelligence (CI) as there are applications of it. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals defines it as “a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing and managing internal and external information that can affect a company’s plans, decisions and operations”. (SCIP.org) Specifically, it is the legal collection and analysis of information regarding the capabilities, vulnerabilities and intentions of business competitors, conducted by using information databases and other ‘open sources’ and through ethical inquiry (Styhre, 2002).

18Knowledge management is often described as a management tool – either an operational or strategically focused management tool (Martensson, M., 2000). Knowledge management is also an information handling tool which deals with the creation, management and exploitation of knowledge. The first step of the process is the acquisition of information. In the second stage the information is entered into a storage system and organized logically. In the next stage the information is made accessible to as many employees as possible. The final stage, namely the utilisation, begins with people sharing knowledge by talking and socialising and exchanging information in digital or analogue form. Finally knowledge management is a strategic management tool and a way to improve performance, productivity and competitiveness, improved decision-making, capturing best practices, reduce research costs and improve innovation (Martensson, M., 2000).

19In summary, organisations that are managing knowledge effectively (i) understand their strategic knowledge requirements, (ii) devise a knowledge strategy appropriate to their business strategy, and (iii) implement an organisational and technical architecture appropriate to the firm’s knowledge-processing needs. Organisational culture is a critically important aspect for facilitating sharing, learning and knowledge creation (Gupta et al, 2000). In the “KM Nirvana” knowledge exists, people are motivated, the culture supports KM and the appropriate processes and technology are used to achieve “happy outcomes” (Alter, 2006). However, effectiveness and happy outcomes do not necessarily mean ethical and could, depending on the situation, in fact mean the opposite.

21KM systems provide the opportunity to manipulate and control knowledge at the sourcing, collection, storage and distribution phases. Knowledge can be created, omitted or withheld, suppressed, amplified or exaggerated, diminished or distorted. Suppression means that obstacles are created that makes it impossible to create, access and use knowledge that might contravene certain parties’ interests. Distortion refers to the introduction of biases and presenting it in a way that favours a specific party’s interest and viewpoint (Alter, 2006). Alter adds “misappropriation” to this list, which includes theft, modification and inappropriate revelation of knowledge.

22The transfer of knowledge creates intellectual property for the employer and the ownership is shifted from the individual to the collective. The conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge raises important ethical issues. Baskerville and Dulipovici (2006) ask the question whether organisations own the knowledge of their employees or whether personal knowledge falls under the personal privacy theory such that individuals have the right to protect the security of their personal knowledge. In other words, does organisational knowledge fall under the intellectual property theory and organisations therefore have the right to buy, sell and use their corporate knowledge as they wish; or is this knowledge an attribute of an individual which should be protected under human rights to privacy or securityof-person? Is the development of knowledge-sharing organisational structures the rightful exercise of organisational intellectual property rights, or is it an invasion of worker privacy? In short, do organisations that forcibly develop knowledge-sharing cultures violate individual privacy rights?

23Argandona (2003) is of the opinion that the knowledge undoubtedly belongs to individual people, but people usually receive this knowledge in their job. He points out that there is a conflict between the duties of respect of individual dignity and autonomy, but also fairness and loyalty to the organisation. According to him the answer is easier to find when the knowledge is available in external form such as a database, but more difficult when it is knowledge held by a person, including skills, abilities, attitudes and values. Styhre (2002) says that in the Internet-based economic ventures, sharing is by no means a negative thing, but that it becomes part of the modus operandi and business ethic that are shared among Internet– based actors.

24Apart from the conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, KM also demands the direct transfer of tacit knowledge between individuals (‘sharing’). Personal knowledge is liable to be less valuable when transferred to others and the transfer of personal knowledge therefore engages ethical decisions regarding the personal worth of the individual. Employers may unfairly exploit the knowledge of employees without rewarding them accordingly for sharing their knowledge and making it available to others. On the other hand, employees may face ethical dilemmas if they withhold or distort knowledge that should rightfully be shared with the employer (Harshman and Harshman, 2008). It is not clear that personal knowledge can be ethically treated as a commodity to be bought, owned and sold; there are currently no human rights declarations with regard to personal knowledge (such as with property). Article 17 (Right to property) from the Charter of fundamental property rights of the European Union states:

25“Everyone has the right to own, use and bequeath his or her lawful acquired possessions. No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided by the law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good time by their loss. The use of property may be regulated by law insofar as is necessary for the general interest. In addition, Intellectual property shall be protected.”

26The biggest challenge for KM is not a technical one, but one of overcoming cultural barriers, especially the sentiment that holding information is more valuable than sharing it (Martensson, M., 2000). Efforts to deploy KM are often met with employee resistance and reluctance to share their expertise. Employees are competitive by nature and may be more inclined to hoard than share the knowledge they possess. An unwillingness to share knowledge that may hurt an organization’s survival is seen as being seriously unethical (Lin, C-P, 2007). On the other hand, if organisations capture and transfer what the knowledge worker knows (‘tacit knowledge’) into data warehouses the knowledge worker becomes less valuable and can ultimately be dispensed. The importance of making tacit knowledge explicit could therefore have the hidden agenda of making the knowledge worker more vulnerable to downsizing. Cultural values also often prevent people from sharing and disseminating their know-how in an effort to hold onto their individual powerbase and viability (Gupta et al, 2000). In cases where employees are protected by law from the pressures of sharing their knowledge with the firm and colleagues, e.g., when an employee is married to someone from a competing firm or is a member of a labour union, there exists a competing drive to promote the KM paradigm while paradoxically enforcing limitations on information collection and knowledge dissemination.

27The inclusion of the words ‘legal’ and ‘ethical’ in the definition of CI show that CI has come some distance from its nefarious ‘cloak-and-dagger past’, although the theft of technology and information is still a frequent occurrence despite ever more strict regulations and security efforts (Styhre, 2002). Some of the benign tools of CI are as simple as regularly reviewing competitors’ profiles and publicly available reports, conducting patent searches, monitoring news alerts and financial reports, tracking sales force reports, sending out mystery shoppers and noting how full the competitor’s restaurant is. Because they are generally within the public domain, these types of intelligence are known as “open source.” The next level of information is “grey literature” i.e. not in the public domain but available to insiders, those who subscribe to a particular publication or are part of a network. At a yet more sophisticated level, CI includes regularly debriefing supply chain members, scenario modelling, creating a knowledge capturing and management system, customer relationship management technology, data mining, dynamic pricing, robotic shoppers for vendor selection, negotiation and agent communications (Zack, 1999). The large volumes transacted in currency markets, often with the advantage of anonymity provided by electronic commerce, lend themselves to exploitation by the national intelligence agencies for enhancing their budgets for clandestine operations and for destabilising the economies of target countries.

28Saïd and Bretonès (2009) have shown that the integration of Competitive Intelligence (externally oriented) and Knowledge Management (internally oriented) can increase the information absorptive capacities of an organisation. Respecting the intrinsic complexity of the external competitive environment while guarding the internal wealth of knowledge that the employees inside the firm have built should enhance the firm’s ability to quickly take in new information from the marketplace and synthesise it for its own benefit. Firms can derive significant benefits from consciously, proactively, and aggressively managing their explicit and explicable knowledge, which many consider the most important factor of production in the knowledge economy. Doing this in a coherent manner requires aligning a firm’s organisational and technical resources and capabilities with its knowledge strategy. The ethical issues are a balance between the rights of organisations to limit access to knowledge against the rights of society to share in that knowledge for the benefit of society as a whole.

29Under the ‘intellectual property theory’, organisations such as companies, universities and governments are entitled to manage their corporate knowledge, and institute knowledge sharing activities and structures with little restraint. A data mining system can be used to gather and correlate data about the activities of citizens and employees (Land et al, 2007). Under ‘personal privacy theory’, individuals are entitled to protect the security of their personal knowledge, and knowledge sharing institutions must be governed by the voluntarism of the individuals (Baskerville, Dulipovici). Styhre (2002) investigated the practices of knowledge-intensive companies in the pharmaceutical industry and suggests that an ethics of sharing underlying to the use of knowledge needs to be recognized and that the perspective should be based on sharing rather than exploitation. The knowledge based economy is therefore “founded on the ethics of sharing, an ethics of giving”.

30The ethical issues around data mining and the issues of data misuse and privacy breaches are not often discussed, as IS departments and employees take pride in the power of the system.

32Knowledge draws on data and information and is socially and culturally embedded. It is to be expected that different cultures will have different attitudes regarding issues of ethical business conduct and the cultures themselves may change relatively rapidly. What may be commonplace in one country may be considered unethical (or even illegal) in another country. Hofstede’s cultural framework of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity has been widely accepted in the social sciences. Blodgett et al (2001) applied the Hofstede typology to determine the effect of culture on the ethical sensitivity towards various stakeholders. They found that uncertainty avoidance had a positive effect on ethical sensitivity and power distance and individualism/masculinity had negative effects of ethical sensitivity. The ethical sensitivity to stakeholder interests also differs, e.g. Americans are more likely than Taiwanese to place their own personal interests above their employer’s interests and will be more likely to push a competitor out to gain a sale. Resolving the conflict between organisational rights and individual rights to personal knowledge is a moral judgment that is likely to be influenced by cultural values.

33Ethical decision-making is affected by culture through an individual’s deontological and teleological evaluations. Although individuals may regard a particular activity as ethical, they may follow a different course of action because of the desirable outcome. Because people make different assumptions about personal knowledge, it can therefore not be assumed that workers in all cultural value systems will view their own decision not to share their personal knowledge, or a decision to act out of self-interest in the face of internal competition, as unethical or immoral. In certain cultures workers may view knowledge management as an attempt to deprive them of valuable personal attributes and violate their human rights. As a result, in some cultures, management of organisational knowledge vis-à-vis personal knowledge may respond to distinctly different ethical frameworks and require distinctly different management practices. (Baskerville, Dulipovici, 2006)

34Larger companies in France, for instance, tend to have a rigid hierarchy and information flows tend to be top-down or horizontal. Several studies characterise the French as secretive by nature and unwilling to share information within the firm, either out of an instinct towards protection or a belief that power redounds to the information-holder and not the information-sharer (Larrat and McKinley, 2004). An exploration by Martinet & Marti (2001) of companies and practices confirms the pervasive culture in France of clinging to important information until it can be exchanged for some personal advantage. Compounding the problem of knowledge management in the French organisation is the conflict between competing drives to promote the paradigm while paradoxically enforcing limitations on information collection and dissemination under the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL).

35Post-September 11, 2001 changes in the United States vis-à-vis national security and demands for ever more information about companies and private citizens have created softer boundaries between privacy protection and unethical use of data. At the same time, highly publicised corporate scandals have resulted in much tighter regulation and oversight for employees who have access to proprietary information or who develop intellectual property for the employer (McAllister and Cripe, 2008).

36The organisational culture defines the core beliefs, values, norms and social customs that guide the behaviour in an organisation. If organisations want to succeed in their KM practices it should consider both social and technical enablers for knowledge sharing. A culture supportive of KM values knowledge and encourages its creation, sharing and application. Important aspects of such a culture are collaboration, where individuals come together to interact, exchange ideas and share knowledge; trust, without which people will be sceptical about the intentions and behaviours of others and withhold knowledge as a result; innovation, where individuals are encouraged to generate new ideas, knowledge and solutions; and tolerance of mistakes and openness about failures, without the fear of punishment.

37Employee related information is a valuable organisational resource and it is important to consider how this information resource is controlled. The information boundary theory attempts to understand personal privacy at work and highlights when and why individuals withhold or release valuable information [23]. The organisational behaviour of individuals in the organisation will have a direct impact on the knowledge sharing and transfer amongst colleagues and management. Trust is a key factor in an individual’s decision to share personal knowledge with others (Choi et al, 2008).

38Closely related to the concept of company culture is the leadership style and the level of trust the leaders instil in - and the support offered to employees. Leaders are important role models - through deeds, not just words - for the desired behaviour for KM. They should themselves exhibit a willingness to share their knowledge with others in the organisation.

39Information Technology such as databases, hardware and software applications have created the expectation of a new world of leveraged knowledge. Email and Internet have made it possible to share knowledge no matter where the expert is located. However, it should be borne in mind that knowledge is not information and therefore it cannot be delivered by Information Technology (IT). IT is not a “magic bullet” in the process of KM (Lang, 2001; Ndlela and du Toit, 2001). McDermott (1999) states that, while the knowledge revolution is inspired by new information systems, it takes human systems to realise it.