Organizational Communication in Telework: Towards Knowledge Management

Smooth communication through Face-to-face communication across hierarchy has been currently recognized as a critical method for organizational knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. However, these previous research findings are not applicable to telework environment which has much limited face-to-face communication compared with the traditional organization. Although knowledge creation researchers always emphasize on face-to-face communication, research in organizational communication in distributed environment such as telework, are very rare in this field. Further, this research has discussed KM in telework, based on only existing literature, and has not done any empirical analysis. To study knowledge management in telework, we investigate organizational communication in telework. This paper focuses on communication across organizational hierarchy. To achieve the aim of this research, we analyze teleworker’s job related communication data that is collected through log-sheets from two telework groups, and then investigate their communication patterns. Finally, based on our findings, we suggest some implications and hypotheses.