N1039 Information Systems and Organizational Politics

The organizational politics is the search for individual self-interest. The knowledge management or organizational politics are assimilated in order to determine the main causes of “knowledge-doing” gap.

The essay has discussed the way in which the knowledge sharing is regarded as a political one. Next, an instance of ZZ Capital International in China is taken that deployed the knowledge management system for illustrating politics emerging from the implementation.

The type of organizational structure is highly influenced by the change. It takes place while that decides to bring along the modifications in their practices and structure. The knowledge is needed to be distributed properly along with the communication among the member of firms. Through keeping in view the consistency in the up-gradations, the organizations are able to survive. Due to the uniqueness of organizational practices and the setup it has been complicated to manage the change in knowledge and skills of the members (Hislop 2013). This is advantageous for the companies. Various environmental forces possess a vital effect on these organizational forces such that the cultural and technical changes could be retrieved with the closed system in the companies. Different motivational and socialization aspect of the staffs brings about crucial changes in the culture of organizations. Numerous organic and mechanistic cultures have been playing a vital role in the culture of the companies. The efficiency levels, performance, and effectiveness of the people rely on the values and norms of the companies. The profit and organizational performances could be developed through promoting leadership competencies. This also includes the culture of organizational members such that those firms are capable of getting the complete reaction from their members (Serenko and Bontis  2017). The culture of the companies is highly affected by different adhocracy culture promoting innovations. The success of companies depends on the effective management of their leaders. The transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and the contingent reward are the theories of leadership positively relating to the knowledge management.

Since the organizational politics is the seeking for people’s self-interest, few selfish members of the company initially promote the self-interests. This is also at the cost of the organizational aims. However, they pretend as their tasks are towards the direction of higher organizational aims. As the companies are engaged in developing new products, that many times never consider the properties of the political unfairness. The hierarchy or four factors, empowerment, organizational context, suspicion, and micro-politics has been very impactful in considering the knowledge sharing under the project group (Bar?Lev 2015). Further, organizational learning has been affected by the changing contract of psychology, culture and various power differentials between the leadership and groups. Every activity of human resource management highly reflects the learning of organizations. This possesses affirmative relation with performance of the organizations.

The companies are born to enable people to gain collaboratively what has not been achieved alone. The previous researches concentrated on the knowledge at the organizational level that has been embedded in different routines. The present researches have been stressing the responsibilities of knowledge at the individual-level. This also includes the significance of knowledge sharing and transfer taking place among the teams and organizational units (Jacobs,  Jordhus-Lier and de Wet  2015). Then, there has been a rising acknowledgment that the staffs should be motivated in sharing their knowledge with the other people.

Since knowledge stays with knower and no any software of hardware, the knowledge in intended to be flowing among the knower. Here the “absorptive capacity” of the organizations is important. This refers to the ability to search, acquire and assimilate knowledge from the outside sources. Then it is absorbed into the internal processes and routines (Li et al. 2014). These absorptive capabilities comprise four dimensions. Those are the acquisition the ability to recognize and have the externally produced knowledge. Then there is the assimilation that indicates the examination, interpretation, and understanding of information. Next, there is the transformation which the ability to develop and refine various routines facilitating the process of combinations. Lastly, there is the exploration indicating the routines allowing organizations in refining, extending and leveraging the current knowledge. This is through including that into the operations (Botha, Kourie and Snyman 2014).

The knowledge sharing might take place through formal collaboration or informal daily everyday interaction. However, the problem lies in the willingness of the employee in donating knowledge (Bedi and Schat 2013). Moreover, the factors of failures for sharing of knowledge could be categorized into personal, group and organizational levels. The antecedents of the knowledge displayed that the perceived expectations have been positively influencing the knowledge sharing.

Besides, the rise in a number of researches in this area, the companies has been still experiencing difficulties to deploy the strategies of knowledge sharing and effective information among different organizational units. The difficulties are the social issues related to the power and culture of organizations (Tomé and Figueiredo 2015). Thus, the fundamental challenge related to the knowledge transfer and sharing is related to the complexity of social processes occurring while the transfer process and low trust level take place. These have been present while sending and receiving the organizational units. The realization depends usually on the people interpreting, organizing, planning, developing, using and executing the knowledge.

The trust in the supervisor and willingness in assisting the colleagues sees fewer politics. The interest of the organizational members has been intimated through the pay renegotiation and the performance management. This is also useful for learning and organizational change. Thus the political nature of the manager behaviors is determined while undertakes the leadership action. This also includes the behavior modified for ensuring the action is leadership is effective.

The ZZ Capital International at China is an international alternative investment company. It has its headquarters in Hong Kong. This company is used in this study that has implemented the system of knowledge management. This is for illustrating the politics emerging from the implementation. China, is a fast-growing economy, has turned into a major global player (Reich,  Gemino and Sauer  2014). The high-priority effort of China has turned out to be a more effective society and an economy based on knowledge. This indicates the rise in importance of knowledge management.

Despite the significance of knowledge management in China, ZZ has been still facing constraints and limitations in development. This has been not through technological limitations. This has been influenced by the psychological factors like cultural values within various groups and social levels.

The organizational political behavior is a crucial impediment towards knowledge sharing. This has a negative effect on the collaboration in companies in China. ZZ has been fostering back stabbing, breaking confidentiality and suspicion. This has been permitting the people to play the blame game and criticize ideas along with respecting the loudest opinions. Here the ego-driven people and saboteurs people have been tolerated (Gordon and Grant 2013). Thus ZZ faced a hard time encouraging people to make collaboration with each other and then share the knowledge.

As ZZ has been spending more on politics, the less time and energy the people needed to do real work. Now, unfortunately, the political behavior has been a part of ZZ. The primary focus has been thus on the way to foster collaboration within ZZ. For making knowledge management a success, ZZ promoted an open culture where every people shared their knowledge devoid of any fear and restrictions.  

Here, the people have been sharing knowledge through informal means. Moreover, the problem with knowledge management has been to tap into the flows of informal means (Kimura 2013). However, the organizational politics could be eradicated the political maneuvering must be managed is needed to be managed. The mangers of ZZ wishing to curtail the impact and incidence of harming the political behaviors attempted to raise the view-points of trustworthiness of their fellow workers. This is done by emphasizing the shared identities and through pointing the examples where the trustworthiness is demonstrated. This has been also vital to do away with the providing incentives for ZZ’s employees to betray their fellow staffs.

Moreover, managers of ZZ have endeavored to change their knowledge sharing climate of the organization through discussing the managerial support regarding knowledge sharing (Lau et al. 2017). This is done by rising the opportunities of the employees for social interactions. Additionally, managers of ZZ have assured a sufficient supply of critical resources. Further, they have developed a free information flow such that the ZZ remains less dependent on fewer people, using effective practices of organizational change management. This includes the involvement and communication of minimizing the uncertainties during the change. Further, they have also restructured the team and the organizational norms for rejecting the political tactics appearing to interface with the goals of ZZ.

The employees have been also monitoring the workplace and actively discouraging the co-workers engaging in the political tactics. The leadership has been ultimately determined the culture of ZZ. Thus the knowledge sharing entrenched in that culture from top to down. The managers active, shared a clear vision, were committed and lead by various examples (Kacmar et al. 2013).

The political behavior of ZZ like the intentional activities of influence enhanced or protected the self-interests of people or groups. ZZ attempted to influence others using the discretionary behaviors and promoted personal objectives. ZZ understood that their political behaviors lead to distortion and suppression of their information. Thus the main organizational changes have to lead to political behavior where people never responded to the rational argument. This has pushed the organizational changed to political behaviors where people never react to rational argument. The destination has been egotistical motives like career advancement and personal security (Meisler and Vigoda-Gadot  2014). Since the learning and chance have been dependent on people, the politics and power have been playing a crucial role and leading to managers making decisions on the basis of irrational grounds. Various political tactics have decreased the trust and motivation to collaborate. While the people have been operating in the tense political scenario, they have complicacy in relating to the other employees. It has undermined the situations for sharing of active knowledge.

The policies restricted the access to knowledge and information fostered culture rewarding internal competition and secrecy. The information hoarders thrived in such culture. The collaborative and sharing culture got promoted as the people of ZZ were allowed to challenge the other’s ideas positively. This also involved the simple and clear rules, knowledge sharing and collaboration never enforced and the shared group aims and achievements were rewarded (Wiltshire,  Bourdage and Lee 2014). The effective management and information of knowledge also needed feedback mechanisms in the scenario where people were encouraged to here. This openness was promoted. Transparency in communication was established, decision making got encouraged and mixed discipline program teams were used. Moreover, people of ZZ were free to act and be heard (Saleem 2015). Thus a general characteristic of that collaborative workplace has been a huge level of the reciprocal trusts.

The employees of ZZ have engaged in hiding their knowledge for protecting their individual interests or hide the knowledge to retaliate or undermine against other employees. The various mechanisms have been crucial for management of effective knowledge management. Firstly, ZZ installed a vision of knowledge. Then they managed politics for minimizing barriers of trust and fear.  The sharing of knowledge around the boundaries of ZZ increased the know-how and know-what through sharing information and data. Thus ZZ promoted collaboration and innovation. Thus, the various outcomes that are learned from the example of ZZ are that firstly organizational politics takes place in every organization. The organizational political behavior is able to break down the trust in the relationships. The trust is the cornerstone of knowledge sharing, transferring and absorption. Significantly, it limited the knowledge sharing and transfer. The decline of knowledge transfer and sharing has lead to a reduction of absorptive capacity. Lastly, the decline of knowledge absorption leads to decrease of organizational performance.

References:

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