Managing Multiple Identities in Organization-wide KM: A Case Study of Wipro Technologies

A common, but important issue with large Information Technology (IT) organizations that implement Knowledge Management (KM) strategies is end-user apathy and indifference towards the KM initiative in organizational units. End-user communities associate themselves minimally with the organization-wide KM apparatus, rarely contributing to the initiative, or/and in a few cases completely dissociate themselves from the KM initiative. Here, we analyze the qualitative data collected from an in-depth case study of the KM implementation at Wipro Technologies, one of India’s largest IT organizations and a KM pioneer, through the lens of the Social Identity Theory (SIT). Evidence from the case points to the dominance of multiple social identities. The enactment of the various social identities in everyday organizational life underlay the end-user responses. It emerged from the case that evoking organizational identities in end-user communities in the context of sharing and contributing explicit knowledge is an important challenge facing organizational KM strategies.