Managed socialization: how smart companies leverage global knowledge

Abstract Driven by economic and market forces, the last 2 decades have witnessed a phenomenal acceleration in the pace of globalization. Today, globalization, and particularly globalization of knowledge work, has emerged as a business necessity. In their quest for competitiveness, more and more companies are leveraging global resources by distributing knowledge work across borders and essentially establishing around‐the‐clock innovation engines. Yet, managing knowledge—the most valuable resource of the new economy enterprises—remains to be a formidable business challenge to deal with. This challenge assumes even greater complexity in the context of globalization, characterized by distance, language barriers, cultural diversity, and a host of other socio‐political factors. Whilst there have been considerable developments in the discipline of knowledge management, much of that does not quite alleviate the struggle companies face in effectively harnessing global knowledge. Specifically, while much progress has been made in managing explicit knowledge, firms find it hard to capture and leverage the tacit knowledge, which holds the key to knowledge‐based competition. This paper argues that this inability to capitalize on the tacit knowledge stems from a missing ‘social’ dimension in the design of knowledge management strategies, which when addressed leads to unleashing the valuable tacit knowledge. Drawing on real‐world research spanning 12 leading companies, in this paper we discuss Managed Socialization —the most vital management process for harnessing global knowledge. We argue that only by instituting managed socialization firms can truly succeed in leveraging global knowledge. Toward that, we describe the various elements that constitute managed socialization and based on case studies distil actionable insights that firms can capitalize on to fuel their quest for global dominance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.