Corporate South Africa: making multicultural knowledge sharing work

Purpose – Knowledge management in South Africa is still a very new field of management and knowledge managers are experiencing difficulties with the added dimension of multiculturalism. The history of South Africa, along with its current focus on cultural equality, complicates the matter. This research seeks to look at the challenges facing knowledge managers in a multicultural South African corporate environment.Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory study, using in‐depth interviewing and a focus group as information collection methods, was launched to explore South African knowledge‐management practices in a cross‐section of companies in the economy.Findings – Results showed that companies were afraid to acknowledge cultural differences because of major cultural sensitivity and, as a result, corporate culture was seen as the great equaliser of cultural exchanges. Knowledge managers, along with top management's support, must rather create a cooperative knowledge‐sharing environment in which South A...