Knowing-doing gaps in the ICT workplace: gender and culture

Knowledge that is not applied, results in a ‘knowing-doing gap’. While education, training and knowledge management practices will affect what we know; how, when and with whom we use that knowledge will be mediated by cultural influences at the societal, organizational, group and individual levels. Based on a study involving 119 ICT workers in multicultural Australia, we found patterns of knowledge usage behaviour using a psychology-based scenario approach across a number of gender and culture-based cohorts: Male, Female, Anglo, Non English Speaking Background, Western and Eastern. In this paper we focus particularly on the results of statistical analysis of the data by gender and culture to compare ‘ethical’ (should do) responses with their corresponding ‘realistic’ (will do) responses.

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