ABSTRACT
Knowledge is information embedded within a context. HR knowledge is no different in this. Davenport and Prusak (1998) define knowledge as information combined with experience, context, interpretation and reflection. Sackmann (1991, 1992) identified four kinds of cultural knowledge:
procedural in nature, concerning definitions and classifications of objects (called “dictionary knowledge”);
information on how things are done, that is, descriptive in nature (called “directory knowledge”);
When an international HR director gets his or her HR managers from around the world together at some global forum and presents the HR strategy and constituent practices that will come to the fore, just because the country HR managers nod at the mention of certain practices means little in relation to the way in which they will (or will not) support the business logic behind the strategy, or indeed the outcomes that they intend to create by the pursuit of a particular practice. Two empirically supported findings show the nature of the challenge:
Logic recipes: Research has shown that when asked about the perceived relevance of specific HR practices to the competitive advantage of their organizations, there is a clear imprint of nationality. HR professionals packaged HR practices into a series of recipes concerning for example the range of practices that created a sense of empowerment through changes to organization structure, the range of practices that accelerated the pace at which human resources could be developed within the organization, the practices to develop an employee welfare orientation, an efficiency orientation or a long term perspective. Practitioners agree on the practices and the implicit logic represented by these underlying recipes, but they will rate their importance to the creation of competitive advantage in fundamentally different ways from one country to another (Sparrow and Budwhar, 1997).
