Changing the rules of the game - a systematic approach for influencing corporate knowledge behavior

Creating organization-wide behavioral change in a large organization is an extremely challenging task. However, it is a well-known fact that creating tangible cultural change in the way people think and act regarding exchange of knowledge is an absolute pre-requisite for successful introduction of Knowledge Management (KM) in a company. Based on the experience of several cultural change projects carried out by Arthur D. Little typically as inherent parts of its KM implementation projects, we suggest a well-proven process for triggering behavioral change to enable KM in large corporations. The suggested process framework approaches the complexity of behavioral change from a pragmatic and action-oriented perspective, describing a holistic process that is typically carried out as a project with systematic involvement of external consultants as well as various internal stakeholders. The process starts with a detailed and structured analysis of the cultural conditions for knowledge exchange and development. It then entails a methodology for designing measures for behavioral change which adequately address the cultural barriers hampering the desired knowledge behavior. The article provides rich empirical illustrations for each process step and includes insights on how external and internal expertise and perspectives can be effectively combined along the process to ensure depth of analysis and maximum impact of the defined measures.