Understanding Ethnicity and National Culture: A Theoretical Perspective on Knowledge Management in the Organization

Abstract

The focus of this research is to relate ethnicity and its effect on national cultural values. The paper points out how the ethnic and economic reasons for conflict influence this interaction that creates barriers in the knowledge management processes in an organization. Theoretical model is predicated on two structural dimensions of ethnicity: ethnic boundary and ethnic competition, which are then related to the national cultural values of individualism, masculinity, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. The cultural values of long‐term versus short‐term orientation and indulgence versus restraint are not included in the conceptualization as the first one is rarely used because of its inclination toward Confucian ethic, whereas the second is found to be more or less complementary to long‐term versus short‐term orientation. In the paper, prejudice and limited absorptive capacity are identified as the first‐level effects, which, consequentially, produce the barriers of knowledge hoarding and knowledge stickiness during the course of knowledge transference in an organization. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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