The following article is really about getting spammed on a continual basis, finally flipping your proverbial 'bit' and sending an email to the offending spammer threatening them with bodily harm and getting arrested yourself. However, it had a great closing pertinent to 'knowledge management' that I am citing below:
ITBusiness.ca :: You writin' to me?
by Dave Webb
...According to intellectual capital expert Nick Bontis of McMaster University, there are two major barriers in North America to a successful knowledge management environment. One is the input bottleneck -- though we can speak at 150 words a minute, most of us can't tickle a keyboard faster than 50 words per minute. This causes us to be selective about what we share, though frequent readers of this space might disagree. The second is cultural -- unlike, say, Japanese companies, North American firms tend to disseminate business information from the top down. Japanese workers are more accustomed to a collaborative environment -- horizontal sharing of information. North American workers lean more toward the knowledge-is-power ethic -- hoarded knowledge is leverage.
Recent vast improvements in speech recognition technology mean that the first barrier could soon be overcome. And there will be pressure, as companies recognize the value of knowledge sharing and try to enforce a culture that encourages it, for employees to be more forthcoming with their knowledge. In an environment designed for rapid and wide distribution of knowledge, we'll again run up against the immediacy issue. And we might share some things we'll wish we hadn't...
K-Collector