Knowledge sharing via informal communities in a globally distributed organization

This research studies the geographic diversity and variation in informal communities within a globally distributed bank in Australia and how these differences impact on the effectiveness of internal collaboration within a Bank. Its social networking technologies with implications for their deployment and use are also explored. Online survey data is collected from 373 employees across all its main branches in Australia and Asia. Three main findings are: collectivist-oriented employees tend to feel more positive in terms of their work outcomes after informal community interactions than individualist-oriented employees; individualist-oriented employees are slightly less willing to share knowledge in informal communities than collectivist-oriented employees and e-mail is the most commonly used and preferred ICT tool for communication in informal communities across all global offices, regardless of cultural orientation. Suggestions for further work include doing a study on organisational culture versus geographic culture or doing a study on organisations in transitioning geographic cultures.