Mitigating Barriers for Knowledge Sharing in the Swedish Forest Industry

Knowledge is one of the most central driving forces in today’s economy. Thus, organizations need to recognize knowledge as a valuable resource and develop tools for tapping into the collective intelligence and create a greater organizational knowledge base. However, to stay competitive on today’s global marketplace actors must collaborate and share knowledge across organizational boundaries. Companies must therefore consider barriers to knowledge sharing. While the importance of knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries has been highlighted, researchers emphasize that an interesting factor to examine in further research is the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to mitigate barriers for knowledge sharing. The purpose with this study is to explore in what way ICT may be used to mitigate barriers for knowledge sharing between individual forest landowners and forest companies within the Swedish forest industry. The study is divided into two research questions: (1) What critical barriers for knowledge sharing exist between individual forest landowners and forest companies within the Swedish forest industry? and (2) In what way may ICT be used to mitigate barriers for knowledge sharing between individual forest landowners and forest companies. To answer the research questions, a multiple case study consisting of 23 interviews was conducted with forest consultants, forest landowners and forest companies. In addition to prior literature regarding individual, organizational and technology barriers, our study emphasize that firms also must consider inter-organizational barriers to knowledge sharing. By mapping the most critical barriers according to individual forest landowners and forest companies, our study assess in what way ICT may be used to mitigate these barriers. In addition, the study contributes with an emerging framework for managers to visualize and prioritize barriers to mitigate, which is useful when planning and evaluating knowledge management activities