Knowledge Management Research & Practice (2003) 1, 3948

& 2003 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved 14778238/03 $25.00
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Critical role of leadership in nurturing a knowledge-supporting culture

` Vincent M Ribiere1 Alesa Sasa Sitar2
1 American University, CAP Department Washington, District of Columbia, USA; 2 Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva plosad, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Correspondence: `re, CAP Department Vincent M. Ribie McKinley, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20016, U.S.A. Tel: 1 202 885 1488; Fax: 1 202 885 1479; E-mail: ribiere@american.edu

Abstract This paper addresses the critical role leadership plays in the implementation and facilitation of knowledge management activities. Leadership is particularly important for organizations willing to evolve their culture to a knowledgesupporting culture. Organizational culture has been identified as the main impediment to knowledge activities, and therefore leaders should model the proper behaviors causing culture to evolve in a way that enables and motivates knowledge workers to create, codify, transfer, and use and leverage knowledge. In the literature this leadership behavior is referred to as leading through a knowledge lens. Leading through a knowledge lens has some special characteristics since it is dealing with knowledge workers having specialized expertise. Leading them can be done only by intellectual power, conviction, persuasion, and interactive dialog. It requires skills that build confidence and engagement. Therefore, leaders should establish trust and commitment that will help the knowledge organization to achieve its knowledge and business goals. Knowledge Management Research & Practice (2003) 1, 3948. doi:10.1057/ palgrave.kmrp.8500004
Keywords: knowledge management; organizational culture; leadership; organizational learning; knowledge worker

Introduction
As P Drucker (2001) predicted, we are slowly entering a knowledge society along with its respective knowledge economy and industry. The workforce will become rapidly dominated by knowledge workers. The Gartner research group categorizes knowledge workers by the kind of knowledge that is being applied or generated, the relevant scope of that knowledge, and the potential impact and value of that knowledge to the enterprise (Tunick Morello et al., 2001). Too often when we think about knowledge workers, we picture white collar workers. This association is too limited. Gartner research categorizes knowledge workers into three groups: taskbased knowledge worker (e.g., a waiter), skill-based knowledge worker (e.g., programmers), and innovation-focused knowledge worker (e.g., composers) (Tunick Morello & Caldwell, 2001). More and more job positions at all levels require some kind of knowledge, know-how, and experience. The use of computerized systems at all levels and the critical importance of instant customer satisfaction force employees to rapidly find and analyze information and require them to make rapid decisions in evaluating their eventual business repercussions. P Drucker (2001) also envisioned that the management of knowledge workers should be based on the assumption that the corporation needs them more than they need the corporation. Being aware of such evolution, and we could even say revolution, we need to proactively and rapidly reevaluate and adapt our management concepts

Received: 11 February 2003 Revised: 3 April 2003 Accepted: 3 April 2003

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and approaches if we want to be able to motivate and retain key knowledge workers. Davenport et al. (2002) presented a framework of work-setting solutions where a segmentation of work environment is presented. They support the fact that some degree of choice in how and where to work goes a long way toward making knowledge workers happy and consequently productive. We support this idea and also believe that a strong knowledgesupporting culture must be nurtured in order to create an environment where knowledge workers feel comfortable, where they can learn, be productive, and where they are empowered and given the opportunity to be creative and to innovate. Therefore, in the first part of the paper, we will present organizational culture, its critical role in knowledge management (KM), and its characteristics that are suitable to knowledge workers. In the second part, we will focus on leadership styles and mechanisms that gradually change the culture in this direction.

Organizational culture
As Firestone (2003) points out, the term culture can be interpreted in different ways by different people, so one needs to be careful of what is really meant by culture. The term Organizational culture has been defined in the literature by numerous authors (Ott, 1989; Morris, 1992; Mallak & Kurstedt, 1994; Rogers & Ferketish 1993; Westbrook, 1993; Ouchi, 1981). We selected two definitions:
Routinized ways of doing things that people accept and live by. Organizations have norms and values that influence how members conduct themselves. These norms may prevent members from applying a maximum effort or may encourage them to do so (Blake & Mouton 1969, 1985). A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that had worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems (Schein 1994, 1999).

Organizational culture can also be defined as the character or the personality of an organization. Schein describes it as the ways things are done in an organization. Organizational culture is extremely broad and inclusive in scope. It comprises a complex, interrelated, comprehensive, and ambiguous set of factors (Cameron & Quinn 1998). All definitions claim that culture is tightly connected to a certain group of people who have been working together for a considerable period of time. Throughout this period they developed certain behaviors to deal with and solve problems as well as a collective identity, and know how to work together effectively. Culture guides their day-to-day working relationships and determines how people communicate within the organization, what kind of behaviour is acceptable or not, and how power and status are allocated. Because their behaviour resulted

in success for the company, it is now taught to new members of the group. Organizational cultures have been characterized in different ways by different authors (Tuggle & Shaw, 2000): strong vs weak (Deal & Kennedy, 1982), positive vs negative (Goffee & Jones, 1998), adaptive vs rigid (Kotter & Heskett, 1992; Caldwell & OReilly, 1995; Nemeth & Staw, 1989), and constructive vs passive/ defensive vs aggressive/defensive (Cook & Szumal 2000). Because we are limited by the length of this paper, we cannot describe in detail the attributes of each culture type. However, we think that the meaningful terms used by the authors to describe them will allow one to build his/her own vision of what such a culture is like. Another amusing way to describe an organizational culture is to use metaphors. Line (1999) used animal metaphors to describe different culture styles. The animals used are as varied as the lion, chimpanzee, wolf, cow, sheep, cat, Elephant, etc. As an example, some attributes of the lion culture will be: dominating without a great deal of effort, eating others when it needs to but relaxed for the rest of the time. The cat culture will be more like: fight when their territory is invaded, but know when to back down, flexible and great curiosity, no cat head in a troop, they are democratic, adaptable, extreme hyperactivity with absolute relaxation (Line, 1999). It is also important to understand the differences between organizational culture and organizational climate. These concepts appear to be similar and can be easily misinterpreted or incorrectly used in an interchangeable manner. Many definitions (sometimes contradictory) have been given to describe the differences between culture and climate. Schneider used three simple questions that we think can summarize and facilitate the understanding of these two concepts (Schneider, 2000). First, ask knowledge workers how they experience their work organization. They could describe it as cheap, adventurous, innovative, service-oriented, employeecentered, etc. All these attributes define the climate of the organization (Schneider, 2000). Now ask them to describe the kind of things that happen to them and around them that make them describe their organization using the previous terms. These answers are what Schneider calls the stimuli that yield the climate. The last question will be to ask them to explain why they think these things happen in their organization. This question entails the emergence of stories, myths, management beliefs, and values that represent the culture of the organization (Schneider, 2000). In this paper we will address the culture of an organization in assuming that culture is the most critical factor that shapes behavior. The organizational culture must be supportive of knowledge workers business needs and collaborative needs.

Critical role of culture in KM initiatives and in knowledge organizations

A recent survey conducted by Pauleen and Mason (2002) asked 46 New Zealand KM practitioners (46% in public

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sector, 54% in private sector) what were the greatest barriers to successful implementation of KM were. The two most important barriers mentioned were:  organizational culture mentioned by 45% of the respondents and  leadership mentioned by 22% of the respondents. Studies and surveys looking at the causes of KM initiative failure (Microsoft, 1999; Barth, 2000; KPMG, 1999; Knowledge Management Review, 2001; Pauleen and Mason, 2002) come to the same conclusion: organizational culture is the main barrier to success or an important precondition (Tuggle & Shaw, 2000). Technology was only mentioned by 7% of the respondents, which indicates that information technology (IT) is far from being one of the main barriers to KM initiative success. It seems that currently the IT tools designed to facilitate knowledge creation, capture, representation, storage, and sharing are available (even though no vendor, to our knowledge, currently offers an integrated enterprise-wide KM solution), but their efficient use and acceptance by knowledge workers remain constrained by organizational culture. After having primarily focused efforts on IT, practitioners finally recognize the importance of the soft aspect of KM initiatives. As Thomas Davenport says, Dont expect software to solve your knowledge problem, if you are spending more than a third of your time, effort and money on technology, youre neglecting the other factors that will help them to come the content, the organizational culture, the motivational approaches, and so forth (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). Another new and critical parameter to take into consideration is the one advanced by the Gartner research group (Tunick Morello et al., 2001):
By 2005, 60 percent of knowledge workers will use culture as the primary reason for accepting or declining an employment opportunity (0.8 probability).

other hand, Asian cultures have a group-oriented mentality naturally inclined to share. For instance, Japanese consider the organization that employs them as family and they very often remain loyal to it all along their career. Such culture is conducive for building trust among colleagues which could facilitate the socialization process in knowledge sharing (Chan & Ng, 2003). We list the main reported causes of knowledge hoarding (Kinsey Goman, 2002; Hubert, 2002; Rao, 2002):               People believe that knowledge is power. People are insecure about the value of their knowledge. People dont trust each others. Employees are afraid of negative consequences (insights and opinions are ridiculed, criticized or ignored). People work for other people who dont tell what they know. People lack time. People forget to share. People dont want additional work and responsibilities. People dont see the connection between sharing knowledge and the business purpose. The Not invented here syndrome. Disapproval of perceived copying from a neighbor. Entrenched fiefdoms. Technophobia in using new KM systems. Fear of being downsized.

If there is general agreement that a KM-supporting culture must be present or nurtured in order to succeed with a KM initiative and to retain or attract knowledge workers, few academic researches have been conducted defining the key organizational culture factors that promote, encourage, facilitate, and support such a knowledge-sharing culture. Why are knowledge workers reluctant to share? What is in it for them?

Key factors for a knowledge-sharing culture Western educational systems and society do not particularly promote knowledge sharing. For example, very early on children are told in class not to share their homework with other students, and team projects are rare and not valued. Individualistic behaviors are reinforced by school entrance examinations that promote information hoarding. These selfish behaviors are perpetuated into the working environment, where knowledge hoarded is used as a means of advancement (Lim et al., 2000). On the

The manner in which a KM initiative is presented, the way it is interpreted by employees and the way it is implemented play a critical role in its future success. KM should not be an add-on task; it needs to be embedded in daily activities. As in Molieres Bourgeois Gentilhomme play where Mr. Jourdain suddenly discovers that he has been speaking in prose for 40 years without even knowing it, KM should be accomplished by employees without them realizing it. Nevertheless, a large part of the knowledge hoarding behaviors previously listed is the direct consequence of the organizational culture and of the lack of trust. ` Park and Ribiere conducted a research that aimed at identifying the organizational culture factors critical to ` sustain a KM-sharing culture (Park, 2002; Ribiere & Park, 2002). In all, 44 cultural attributes of OReilly et al.s (1991) organizational culture profile (OCP) in combination with the KM technology profile instruments (KMTP) were used to identify and rank the most critical organizational culture attributes of promoting knowledge sharing and KM technology implementation successes. Data were collected from 26 U.S. organizations involved in a KM effort. Table 1 shows the top five correlation values obtained between the KMTP score for knowledge sharing and the 40 OCP cultural attributes. The results of this research support and reinforce the fact that an organization having a culture where team work, collaboration, trust, and employee support are valued is more likely to succeed in a KM effort. We strongly believe that trust is the key enabler of creating a

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Table 1

Correlation between KMTP Score for Knowledge Sharing and OCP Cultural Attributes
Correlation 0.72 0.68 0.62 0.61 0.58

OCP Attributes a culture wherey Team-oriented work is valued Working closely with others is valued Sharing information freely is valued Trust is valued Supportive of employees

knowledge-sharing culture facilitating knowledge transfer and innovation.

Trust consists of a willingness to increase your vulnerability to another person whose behaviour you cannot control, in a situation in which your potential benefit is much less than your potential loss if the other person abuses your vulnerability (Zand, 1997). Trust is the one essential lubricant to any and all social activities. Allowing people to work and live together without generating a constant, wasteful flurry of conflict and negotiations (Cohen & Prusak, 2001).

Trust can be differentiated as interpersonal trust (between the employee and the manager) and systems trust (between the employee and the organization as a whole) (Nyhan & Marlowe, 1997; Nyhan, 1999). Trust stimulates innovation, leads to greater emotional stability, facilitates acceptance and openness of expression, and encourages risk taking. Consequences of low trust are: values, motives of others being misperceived, less accurate communication, poor reception, less ability to recognize and accept good ideas, increased attempts to obtain relevant information (grapevine), increased control mechanisms, self-control replaced by external controls, delayed implementation, increased rejection, defensiveness, hostility, and a winlose mentality replacing winwin (De Furia, 1997). Leadership will be seen here as a solution to build a trust-based culture and a trust-based organization; we will discuss how later on in this paper.

Ways to evolve a culture Before trying to change the culture of an organization, it is important to understand the current dominant culture of the organization as well as to identify its subcultures (or mini-cultures). We prefer to employ the expression used by Schein (2000) to evolve the culture rather than to change the culture meaning that the new expected culture will be built on the different aspects of the current culture that already facilitate knowledge exchange. Other authors used a similar idea in talking about leveraging the culture (Achterberg, 2001) or engaging the culture (Hubert, 2002). This approach mitigates the impact and the resistance associated with organizational change. There is almost an agreement among researchers concerning the core components of organizational culture and their definition. Unfortunately, this agree-

ment is not as strong when we look at methods to assess organizational culture. Rousseau (1990) said that the Quantitative assessment of culture is controversial and that only certain dimensions of culture may be appropriately studied using quantitative methods. Reigle and Westbrook noted that currently there are inadequate means to measure organizational culture (Reigle & Westbrook, 2000). Schein also asserted that there are survey instruments and questionnaires that claim to measure culture, but in terms of the culture model that I present, they only unearth some of the artifacts, some espoused values, and maybe one or two underlying assumptions. They do not reach the tacit shared assumptions that may be of importance in your organization (Schein, 1999). Apparently, the deep assessment of an organizational culture is unlikely to only use a questionnaire. Learning about the history of a company, visiting the place, talking to employees, and observing behaviors is preferred. Once the culture has been assessed and understood, a culture evolution strategy can be defined. If the culture evolution is not carefully defined and implemented, the risk of failure is significant. The Gartner research group published the following statement: Our clients report that cultural changes require 50 percent to 70 percent of the overall KM implementation effort, and failure to change culture accounts for at least 50 percent of KM failures (Harris 1998). So what is the best strategy to evolve a culture? We believe that leadership is the key to such transformation. Cultural changes occur through leadership and vision rather than directives (Harris, 1999). How quickly the culture will change to one supportive of organizational learning and knowledge management in great part depends on leadership in the company. Leadership is very important because it influences the behavior of employees through gradually changing their values corresponding closer to those of the learning organization. Leadership helps the change process to get going. In general, leaders play a key role in maintaining and transmitting the culture. They use a number of powerful mechanisms including what they pay attention to, measure, control, how they react to a range of crises, and whom they recruit, promote and reward. All these mechanisms send important messages about the kind of organization the leaders are running. In the following section we will recognize that leadership is the key to managing cultural evolution. Therefore, leaders play an important role in the changing process towards learning and knowledge.

Leadership
We are convinced that leadership is and has always been the principal approach to convince and motivate employees to do what managers have planned for them in advance. We know that employees are not always willing to do what is good for the company. An activity must first be of interest to them. In this part of the paper we will

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first focus on the concept of leadership in general and then study it through a KM perspective. Leadership, by its influence component, facilitates the implementation of knowledge activities in an organization. Leadership gets the process going. Let us start by explaining what leadership is. Leadership is about setting direction, motivating, and inspiring employees. In other words, leadership is mostly about people (Hooper & Potter, 2000). Leadership is that part of the management where we bring employees into the picture. For them to start working, the organizations vision must be shared and understood. Once they understand how their job contributes to achieve the organizations vision, leadership will inspire them and motivate them for action. Leadership can be defined as:
influencing others to work willingly towards achieving objectives, to implement the companys plans. It means crystallizing a direction for employees and make them want to follow the leader in achieving the leaders goals (Dessler, 2001). it is the process of inspiring others to work hard to accomplish important tasks. It builds the commitment and enthusiasm needed for people to apply their talents to help accomplish plans (Schermerhor, 2002).

These two definitions include basic thoughts about leadership that are shared by several authors (Owen, 2000). After a literature review on the concepts associated with management and leadership, it becomes clear that leadership consists of four basic counterparts: staffing, leadership style, motivation, and communication. Because of its importance and connection to leadership, some authors add teamwork as a fifth counterpart. Staffing as part of leadership provides an organization with the right people. It is therefore the first step towards achieving goals (Schermerhor, 2002). Staffing includes activities like recruiting, interviewing, testing and selecting new employees, as well as training and developing them to be able to do their job. But why are employees willing to follow leaders? In the literature, three answers: (1) because they have power, (2) because they have knowledge, or (3) because of their personal charisma. These are three sources of authority that lead to different leadership styles. Leadership style can be defined as a recurring pattern of behaviors exhibited by a leader (Schermerhor, 2002). The most commonly known leadership styles in theory and practice are (Dessler, 2001): employee-oriented vs jobcentered; participative, self-management and autocratic; close, general and Laissez-faire; transformational vs transactional; situational models and contingency approaches. They represent a combination of leaders characteristics and behaviors. Most recently other types of leadership have been recognized like charismatic, heroic, intellectual, ideological, etc. (Brenneman et al., 2000; Politis, 2001). Even though we try to make a clear distinction among characteristics of a particular leader-

ship style, most leaders combine different styles at different degrees in different situations. In order to get people going, leaders must motivate them and show them what is in it for them. People work because they want to satisfy their needs (Dessler, 2001). Most important for leaders is to recognize that different individuals are motivated by different things, and that they should use different approaches like pay, bonuses, raises, rewards, recognition awards as well as job redesign, empowering employees, positive reinforcement, etc., offering each individual what he/she desires. If leaders want people to accomplish a task, they clearly have to tell them what their job consists of and what is expected of them (Schermerhor, 2002). Communication is therefore vital. From our experience, we know that the message that has been sent in many cases can be distorted due to several barriers of communication. But there are different ways to improve communication from active listening, clarifying ideas, to changing culture and structure, etc. In all of them leaders play an important role. They must model desired behaviour and more importantly walk the talk. Due to the increasing importance of teamwork in a companys success, leaders should have the skills to facilitate and manage teamwork. They should provide an environment that facilitates and promotes teamwork. In order to support teamwork, leadership has to change and become more participative, even transformational, supporting employees involvement, idea-sharing, and leading a team towards a higher purpose.

How leadership can help evolve the culture Due to the role that leaders play in organizations, they have, from the beginning of organizational life, an enormous impact on the culture. At the beginning the founder (leader) provides his/her beliefs, values and assumptions as to how a group should be structured and how it should function (Schein, 1994). Later on, leaders will hire people that best fit the existing organizational values and beliefs. The impact of the leader on employees should be such that when dealing with a new problematic situation, the employees first reaction should be to ask themselves what the leader would do in such circumstances before they make any decision. In fact, how quickly the culture of a particular organization will evolve greatly depends on the presence of strong leadership or not. Leaders usually start to evolve organizational culture by influencing the visible part of the culture (artifact), which then gradually causes the invisible part to start changing too. Leaders set the desired behavior by using symbols and signals to influence the corporate culture. We can say that they use their leadership mechanisms: motivational tools, reward system, communication style, personal charisma and knowledge, and recruitment procedure, etc. Through communication they make sure that employees understand the new cultural values and they

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reinforce these values in their actions and words. Through deliberate role-modelling and coaching, through setting operational criteria for the allocation of rewards and status, and through defining operational criteria for recruitment, selection, promotion, retirement, etc., they send across a message reflecting the new values of the organization (Siehl, 1985; Daft, 1997). Because leaders have such an influence on culture, they should use this mechanism adequately in order to establish the forms of thinking and the levels of motivation and behaviors that are important for the company. When KM is in focus, leaders must devote time and attention to knowledge activities and issues (Popper & Lipshitz, 2000), and they can do so through every-day behaviors that send a clear message, something that is particularly important.

Leadership for KM Before leaders can properly use the previously defined mechanisms (toolbox), it is crucial that they themselves understand the characteristics of KM. Only then will they be capable of leading knowledge workers. They should start by employing the right people, and must motivate them to perform their job and to constantly learn. They must be open, and must communicate freely and share their knowledge with their employees. Finally, leaders should build their authority on professional knowledge and personal charisma. Only then will the relationships among leaders and knowledge workers bring knowledge and learning forward, transforming them into crucial activities of the knowledge organization, which will be built on mutually shared values and culture (Hall, 2001). When talking about leadership in a knowledge context, we are thinking about leading through a knowledge lens (derived from management through a knowledge lens (Bukowitz & Williams, 1999), which we must separate from the term knowledge leadership. Knowledge leadership is understood in the literature as a broad category of positions and responsibilities connected to new knowledge jobs established to implement knowledge management in companies (Cortada & Woods, 1999). It includes positions like knowledge managers, CKO, knowledge analysts, knowledge engineers, knowledge stewards, etc. They are all performing a specific group of tasks regarding knowledge management implementation. They are visible promoters of the knowledge agenda (Skyrme & Amidon, 1997). On the other hand Leading through a knowledge lens involves all the leaders who are working in a company, demanding them to change their approach in such a way as to lead their knowledge workers to learn and use knowledge, thereby achieving the knowledge goals of the company as a whole. Focus on knowledge in organizations provides a new lens through which the everyday leadership process can be viewed. It brings into focus all those activities that help better handle and manage knowledge and employees (Bukowitz & Williams, 1999).

It is quite obvious that the second type of leadership is more focused on long-term aspects of knowledge organizations, but when starting knowledge management in a company, knowledge leadership is particularly important to get the initiative going. With time, knowledge leadership must then become dispersed and accountability for learning in the organization widely accepted. The knowledge initiative will achieve success when separate knowledge leadership positions will no longer be necessary (or not defined as such) and when they will become part of everyones job. Thereafter, knowledge leadership will change into leading through a knowledge lens (Skyrme, 1999). Leadership in a knowledge organization is of great importance because we are dealing with knowledge workers, with specialized expertise. Leading them can be done only through intellectual power, conviction, persuasion, and interactive dialog. It requires skills that build confidence and engagement. Therefore, it is most important that knowledge workers perceive their leaders as being actively engaged and committed to supporting knowledge and learning activities and that they recognize and reward such attempts in their co-workers (Burtha, 2001). Leaders can be role models of the desired behavior (Pan & Scarbrough, 1998). Leaders today are aware that they are no longer the main source of knowledge (Bukowitz & Williams, 1999). Knowledge is in their subordinates as well. Therefore, leaders are now starting to share the burden of decisionmaking with their knowledge workers by becoming coaches, asking the right questions, and allowing knowledge workers to participate and get involved. In a wide array of literature (Maccoby, 1996; Marquardt, 2000) different leadership attributes, styles, and roles have been recognized as appropriate for leading a learning organization of the 21st century. These new roles characterize leaders as doctors in constant search of the companys problems, servants, stewards, instructors, coaches, and mentors that encourage, motivate, and help knowledge workers to learn. Leaders are seen as architects of the necessary infrastructure, vision builders and designers of new policies, strategies and principles. They are coordinators, advocates, and champions of learning processes and projects, and therefore change agents, innovators, risktakers, and learners. But above all they also should be system thinkers, seeing parts of as well as the whole organization. Maybe it is somewhat unrealistic to expect leaders to be all of that, but mastering at least some of these new roles is essential for enabling the knowledge sharing and learning environment. Leaders should also be good storytellers. When well selected, organizational stories are a powerful method to convince listeners and to transfer tacit knowledge. Organizational stories reflect the culture of the organization based on past events and behaviors. Stories must be carefully selected in order to be easily understood and pictured by the listeners who unconsciously place themselves into the story. Such stories instinctively serve

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as a guide and reference for knowledge workers and help them in decision-making and in their behavior (Ackoff, 1987). Steve Denning (former CKO of the World Bank) used storytelling to share and communicate his vision of a new organizational strategy for the World Bank and in order to persuade employees and managers to adopt it (Denning, 2000). Through the use of simple past success stories and metaphors, he was able to communicate the benefits that knowledge sharing and knowledge management would bring to the organization and its communities. This difficult organizational change was a success and the World Bank KM case study remains a model. According to theoretical and empirical research findings of several authors (Popper & Lipshitz, 2000; Politis, 2001; Sadler, 2001; Paul et al., 2002), one of the most appropriate leadership styles for knowledge organizations is the transformational leadership style. Transformational leaders are willing to sacrifice their individual interests for the good of the organization and its goals. They motivate co-workers by inspiring a vision of the organizations future. They are constantly questioning the present solutions, thinking differently, encouraging creativity and innovation. They also relate to every employee personally, treating each as an individual with particular needs and abilities. This type of leadership inspires followers to exceed their own self-interests for the good of the organization. On the other hand, some researchers (Politis, 2001) name additional styles as appropriate for knowledge organizations, particularly the self-management leadership style and transactional leadership style. Both styles were recognized as being able to accomplish the required change in culture, encourage communication and knowledge creation as well as the transformational leadership style. Transactional leaders do that by identifying the needs of followers and satisfying them when determined goals are achieved, whereas the self-management leadership style assists employees to develop an ability to manage themselves. In fact, in reality the leaders in organizations will probably exhibit a combination of these different styles in different contexts and, to a certain extent, adjusting them to each particular situation (Paul et al., 2002). Using one of these leadership styles, leaders through their behavior make knowledge activities become totally integrated with work. They reward and recognize desired behaviors by paying tribute to knowledge champions, by offering bonuses, letters of appreciation, promotion, attractive assignments, allocation of resources, etc. Leaders clearly state which activities will be rewarded and make sure that they are in fact contributing to the creation or leverage of knowledge. They evaluate their subordinates according to participation in knowledge activities, which becomes a criterion for promotion. Leaders should provide free access to relevant information, break down barriers to communication, encourage free speech, etc. But mostly they need to use commu-

nication channels to demonstrate the proper behavior through their actions (Pedler et al., 1996). Another critical issue mentioned in the first part of this paper is interpersonal trust and system trust (Nyhan & Marlowe, 1997; Nyhan, 1999). Leaders can create psychological conditions and encourage people to be more accountable, more willing to be transparent, and to be less defensive. Dialogue and communication are the basis for knowledge sharing, because they facilitate the development of social relationships. Trust is fundamental for people to start talking freely without the fear of becoming vulnerable. You cannot expect others to fully share their knowledge unless you have a strong trust relationship with them. Leaders can therefore help build this culture of trust by demonstrating concerns, keeping promises, morality, fairness, openness, honesty, discretion, consistency, integrity, accessibility, and delivering expected results. Trust is primarily built on actions rather than on empty words. Credibility of the senior leaders is key; they must demonstrate credibility and integrity. In contrast, incompetent or unethical leaders can quickly erode whatever trust exists within an organization or team (Shaw, 1997). Leaders can also help knowledge workers identify their own knowledge gaps, what they should learn, and motivate them to admit it if they do not know something (Wah, 1999). Leaders who know and do the work are better at helping knowledge workers turn knowledge into action (Pfeffer & Sutton, 1999). They have higher credibility and are not seen as commanders that are only good at talking. They take time to understand the work people do and reduce status differences between themselves and others. Leaders are aware that performance comes from interdependent behavior like cooperation, knowledge sharing, and mutual assistance (Pfeffer & Sutton, 1999). Therefore, they are not rewarding individual actions, but teamwork. Leaders must get the message across that collaboration is the right way by hiring, rewarding, and retaining people based on their ability and willingness to work cooperatively with others for the companys welfare. They can develop measures to assess cooperation and can also model with their own behavior collaboration, sharing knowledge, and helping others. Promotion should go to those with a history of building groups where members cooperate, share information, and provide assistance. Communication, recognition, rewards, vision, behavior, etc. are the tools available to leaders to get the message across. They demonstrate good teamwork, by drawing members from many disciplines (Skyrme & Amidon, 1997), and they should use effective communication.

Positive effects of leadership on culture All the activities and roles of leaders stated above will result in changed values and culture. A new culture should consequently emerge with its visible artifacts like open office landscape architecture that will support

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communication and knowledge sharing, a high degree of informality, a high degree of confrontation and conflict, no status symbols, sense of high energy and emotional involvement, a strong sense of community, every employee being treated as an individual, people staying late, people expressing excitement about the importance of their work, and finally annual award celebrations in order to officially celebrate those employees who go above their call of duty (Pirc, 2001). Leadership behavior will encourage values like hard work, innovation, positive thinking, optimistic attitude, importance of rapid solutions, maximum contribution, no punishment for making mistakes, and risk taking. The underlying assumption of knowledge organization will see every individual as a source of innovation and productivity, giving the company its only sustainable competitive advantage.

Conclusion
After all that has been said, we must recognize that leaders play a crucial role in implementing and sustaining a knowledge-sharing culture that facilitates/enables knowledge activities. Leaders must first of all get the right knowledge workers, and they must motivate them as well as other employees to share and use knowledge to perform their job better and faster while being able to innovate. Leaders must create a learning and trusting environment. They must have various qualities and should build their authority on professional knowledge and personal charisma. Knowledge organizations employees should perceive their leaders as being actively engaged and committed to support knowledge and learning activities and that they

recognize and reward similar behaviors. Knowledge leaders are expected to be actively involved in creating a knowledge-sharing culture, in building trust among employees and therefore stimulating communication for knowledge sharing, in promoting risk taking, in constantly challenging the way in which knowledge workers operate, and in supporting collaboration and teamwork. They must devote time and attention to knowledge activities and issues. It is critical that they walk the KM talk, otherwise knowledge workers will not be willing to follow them and will not use them as role models. We are convinced that in knowledge organizations one of the main priorities of leaders should be to start shaping a culture facilitating learning and knowledge sharing (Pirc, 2001). Leaders should try new ideas, thereby reinforcing the message that people are encouraged to experiment with new ways of working, fail from time to time, and keep learning from their experience (Pfeffer & Sutton, 1999). In order to stimulate organizational learning, leaders should inspire and empower employees to constantly learn, should use and leverage shared knowledge for problem solving, and should share knowledge with others, etc. Such leadership style evolution will require a strong commitment and involvement from leaders. The direct payoff of this effort will be the emergence of a knowledge-supporting culture that enables and facilitates the different knowledge activities in the organization. Employees behavior will evolve as the knowledgesupporting culture becomes stronger and accepted. Nevertheless, we are confident that this is a feasible task for leaders and that they are key players in building a KM supportive culture.

References
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About the authors

` Vincent Ribiere, D.Sc. is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems and Computer Science at the American University in Washington, DC, USA. Vincents current research area, last international publications and consulting activities are related to the role of organizational culture in knowledge management initiative. He is Program Director of the George Washington University Institute for Knowledge Management (http://km.gwu.edu). Alesa Sasa Sitar, M.S., is an Assistant in the Management and Organization Department at the Faculty of Econom ics of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Sasa teaches and conducts research in the area of management, organizational learning, and knowledge management. Over the past years, she has presented various research papers at different international conferences on knowledge management.

Knowledge Management Research & Practice