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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Connections are easy; relationships are hard.
(Lesser and Cothrel 2004, p. 29)There are many elements of the larger organizational context, such as pay and promotion systems, which can impinge on human relationships in KN. However, the focus of this chapter will be on how the human composition of the organization affects the development of KN. Generally researchers have focused on the macro nature of the human environment either in terms of climate or cultural impacts, regarding these phenomena as the macro-media that flavor any interactions embedded within them and the resulting development of particular KN. For example, closed climates are likely to be associated with particularly constrained, fragmented networks that inhibit the free flow of information. Here I first discuss one aspect of macro-media, organizational demography, or the nature of the human composition of the workplace. How individuals come to understand their roles in organizations is a unique form of tacit knowledge which I discuss by focusing on role ambiguity. I then turn to the more classic micro issues related to motivations and individual ignorance, before returning to issues of status and face that blend these two perspectives.
Organizational demography
Organizational demography refers to the composition of the human membership of the organization in terms of such basic attributes as sex and age (Pfeffer 1982). It has been argued that the distribution of such attributes in an organization's population has important consequences for institutions and their members, especially so in the transfer of knowledge (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001).
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