Networking inside the organisation: a case study on knowledge sharing by Nicolas Rolland and Renata Kaminska-Labbe

Networking inside the organisation: a case study on knowledge sharing by Nicolas Rolland and Renata Kaminska-Labbe

The following is my understanding of “Networking inside the organisation: a case study on knowledge sharing” by Nicolas Rolland and Renata Kaminska-Labbe.
The paper is study on a Multinational corporations (MNCs) namely GoodFood. GoodFood is a French multinational food and manufacturing and selling dairy products, baby food and bottled water.

Speed and agility is the mainly factors in the new “capabilities-based competition”. By means of sharing knowledge across geographically dispread organizational units has become more vital to shorten the time-to-market, improve their products’ quality, following and satisfy evolving customer needs.

In 2002, the executive vice president of human resources initiated the Networking Attitude Project to facilitate and speed up knowledge-sharing across business units in distant geographical location based on two tools namelyKnowledge marketplace and Messages in the bottle sessions.

Knowledge marketplace – gathering that involve both managers and non-management employees in exercises to share knowledge on methods to resolve specific business problems. It is enhance management and non- management employees’ communications.

Message in a bottle – small meeting that for participants asked to talk about their problems in front of selected peers. Provide a brief description on a bottle shaped post-it which stick on a board, the listeners will proposes solutions using lifebelt shaped post-it that affix to corresponding problem on the board.

An effective communications routines and motivation to exchange good practices are the essential element in GoodFood knowledge sharing culture. Thus, GoodFood is now focusing on the specific operational problems and connecting people.
The basis thoughts of Knowledge marketplace and Message in a bottle is to avoid reinventing the wheel every time a manager encountered a difficulty, to motivate managers to share their innovate ideas and to ask their colleagues for help, to connect first-line managers and create a true intra-firm network.

The project had a positive impact on the firm’s performance and beneficial GoodFood ‘s economic, product/market development, enhanced flexibility as well as motivation and corporate culture performances.

Overall, the Network Attitude Project is help GoodFood in the process of knowledge creation, transfer and integration, developing a truly learning organization, capable of improving GoodFood performance and sustaining GoodFood ‘s competitive advantage.