How do the culture of knowledge sharing in health (hospital) and pharmaceutical companies differ from other industries? Especially in managing tacit knowledge and willingness of personnel in sharing?
I have spent over 8 years in pharmaceutical industry in Poland and Eastern Europe working in Finance on executive level. I will be happy to share my experience with you but first I wanted to specify the nature of the question: do you mean sharing between different companies or is it about sharing within a company? I would bet it is the latter but wanted to be sure.
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In hospitals the nature of work is completely different with other industries as it deals with human's health; and applying all knowledge management areas is crucial indeed.
Regarding just managerial fields, information flow and knowledge sharing is less sensitive than medical and health industries.
A lot of work in hospitals is literally a matter of life and death. However, the knowledge management systems of hospitals tend to be comparatively primitive. We have studied them nearly a dozen countries and found that those in Singapore and Thailand (Bangkok) were among the most developed.
Moreover, the incentives for the most experienced medical professionals, especially senior doctors, to codify or share knowledge are typical insufficient to motivate concerted action. The culture tends to encourage knowledge hoarding because it is a significant source of power and prestige. A major exception is when they are assigned to mentor or train junior colleagues, and rewarded for doing so.