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blogs, instant messengers, and other types of groupware) may be a better communication
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choice than sending an e-mail and waiting for a response. Instead of fighting it, some
companies are encouraging employees to utilize the power of social networks to collabo-
rate on work and to build strong connections. This trend is especially appealing to younger
workers who are comfortable with this communication medium. Some companies have
gone as far as to create their own in-house social networks. For instance, employees at
Starcom MediaVest Group tap into SMG Connected to find colleague profiles that outline
their jobs, list the brands they admire, and describe their values. A company vice president
says, “Giving our employees a way to connect over the Internet around the world made
sense because they were doing it anyway.” 38

EMPLOYEES AND SOCIAL MEDIA

77 percent say they use social media to connect with colleagues.
35 percent say that social media has damaged a work relationship.
61 percent say that social media has led to new or better work relationships.
32 percent say they use social media to enhance work-related projects or solve
problems. 39

How Does Knowledge Management Affect Communication?
Part of a manager’s responsibility in fostering an environment conducive to learning and
effective communications is to create learning capabilities throughout the organization. These
opportunities should extend from the lowest to the highest levels in all areas. How can man-
agers create such an environment? An important step is recognizing the value of knowledge
as a major resource, just like cash, raw materials, or office equipment. To illustrate the value
of knowledge, think about how you register for your college classes. Do you talk to others
who have had a certain professor? Do you listen to their experiences with this individual and
make your decision based on what they have to say (their knowledge about the situation)? If
you do, you’re tapping into the value of knowledge. But in an organization, just recognizing
the value of accumulated knowledge or wisdom isn’t enough. Managers must deliberately
manage that base of knowledge. Knowledge management involves cultivating a learning
culture in which organizational members systematically gather knowledge and share it with
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others in the organization so as to achieve better performance. For instance, accountants
and consultants at Ernst & Young document best practices that they’ve developed, unusual
problems they’ve dealt with, and other work information. This “knowledge” is then shared
with all employees through computer-based applications and through community-of-interest
teams that meet regularly throughout the company. Many other organizations, including
General Electric, Toyota, and Hewlett-Packard, have recognized the importance of knowl-
edge management within a learning organization (see Chapter 6, pp. 204–205). Today’s
technologies are helping improve knowledge management and facilitating organizational
communications and decision making.

What’s Involved with Managing the Organization’s Knowledge
resources?
Kara Johnson is a materials expert at product design firm IDEO. To make finding the right
materials easier, she built a master library of samples linked to a database that explains their
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properties and manufacturing processes. What Johnson is doing is managing knowledge
and making it easier for others at IDEO to learn and benefit from her knowledge. That’s what
today’s managers need to do with the organization’s knowledge resources—make it easy for
employees to communicate and share their knowledge so they can learn from each other ways
to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. One way organizations can do this is to build
knowledge management online information databases that employees can access. For example, William Wrigley Jr.
Cultivating a learning culture in which organiza- Co. launched an interactive Web site that allows sales agents to access marketing data and
tional members systematically gather knowledge other product information. The sales agents can question company experts about products or
and share it with others
search an online knowledge bank. In its first year, Wrigley estimates that the site cut research