Collaborative Team Learning Contributions to the Knowledge Management Process, Leadership, and Culture in a Multinational Indian IT Company

Collaborative Team Learning Contributions to the Knowledge Management Process, Leadership, and Culture in a Multinational Indian IT Company

Collaboration among individuals in the workplace creates a team environment that provides faster access to knowledge, facilitates information sharing, and ensures multi-directional information flow that allows employees to collectively achieve project-based goals. Such an environment not only enhances learning, but also fosters the creation of new ideas and information. In the information technology (IT) industry, different teams work on different modules or functions, and team members have varied skills and experience, each occupying a different position. This paper investigates collaborative team learning and its contribution to the knowledge management (KM) process, leadership, and culture in a large multinational Indian IT company with more than 100,000 employees. The authors interviewed 21 members of six teams working on different projects using a questionnaire that comprised 13 items. The results indicate that collaborative team learning helps to develop sophisticated and ethical intelligence-gathering mechanisms, to understand the revenue-generating potential of knowledge assets, and to develop strategies for marketing and selling these assets. The results also show that collaborative team learning helps to encourage and facilitate knowledge sharing and to create customer value. The teams preferred that KM culture be strengthened first in an IT organization, ahead of KM process and leadership.