Information Sharing And Its Link To Organizational Sub-Cultures In A Manufacturing Company

Abstract

This study examined the cultures of two organizational departments and the relationship between their cultural norms and the effectiveness of their departmental information sharing systems. The findings indicated that (1) the two departments, described for the purpose of this study as “sub-cultures,” had developed conflicting norms which appeared linked to their departmental information sharing effectiveness; (2) during an organizational change process that involved rotation of department managers, workers underwent a three-stage change process identified as unlearning-boundary spanning-re-framing, similar to Lewin’s unfreezing model.  These findings suggest that (1) department managers can play a major role in the learning and development of employees and should be supported in doing so; and (2) the organization consider a more holistic structure, where common language and mental models could alleviate and possibly eliminate the confusion and misinformation resulting from organizational sub-cultures.