Abstract Paper aims This research aims to evaluate factors that influence knowledge sharing in automotive production context in Brazil and China. Originality Despite the growing recognition of the factors that enable knowledge sharing in organizations, our understanding about the unique challenges encountered by the blue-collar workers in a production context is rather limited. Also, the paper raises issues and challenges involved for production organizations to engage in cross-national knowledge sharing, which remain relatively under-explored. Research method Drawing on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach, we conduct a comparative survey among the production managers in five automotive plants in China and Brazil. The AHP approach is based on Objective: Promote knowledge sharing among production workers; Criteria of knowledge conversion as Socialization, Externalization, Internalization; and Alternatives as Structure, Communication, Training, Incentive, Standard Operating Procedure, Problem Solving Methodology. The methodology focused on the 3 Brazilian and 2 Chinese automotive plants in our fieldwork. Main findings While many authors argue that socialization (dialogue) is the key form of worker knowledge sharing, our findings indicate that workers and managers perceive internalisation as more important in the automotive context. The significant differences between Chinese and Brazilian workers on the relative importance they attributed to knowledge sharing processes and corresponding enabling factors reinforce our understanding about the challenges of knowledge sharing across cultures and lends support to a more particularistic debate of knowledge management. While automotive workers in Brazil preferred to receive more training and better incentive schemes as essential knowledge sharing support mechanisms, Chinese workers valued more standardization through structure and standard operation procedures. The study reaffirms the role of knowledge sharing in continuous improvement and incremental innovation in shop floor operations. Implications for theory and practice In lieu of the gaps in the extant literature, this research aims to further identify and evaluate factors that influence cross-national knowledge sharing in automotive production contexts. The research addressed the gaps to promote supportive ways to provide employees interaction, best practices and lessons learning sharing.

As organizações públicas com as suas diferentes características: objectivos ambíguos, responsabilidades difusas, autonomia limitada e acrescidas pressões ambientais são frequentemente alvo de críticas devido ao seu comportamento disfuncional na aprendizagem. Este estudo aborda a forma como decorrem os processos de aprendizagem organizacional numa organização pública em Macau, segundo a perspectiva teórica dos poderes e da política. Os resultados indicaram que, enquanto o «poder do sistema» parecia ser a maior barreira à aprendizagem, outros tipos de poder, tais como os «poderes dos recursos», o «poder dos processos» e o «poder do significado» ajudaram a promover o comportamento aglutinador criador de sentido na organização. Defendemos que o poder deve ser estudado de forma mais construtiva e isso está dependente do facto de os detentores do poder conseguirem usar mais racionalmente a fonte de poder mais adequada para seu benefício, a fim de superaram as barreiras à aprendizagem.

Public organizations with their distinct characteristics of ambiguous goals, diffused accountability, restricted autonomy and greater environmental pressures are often subject to criticisms about their dysfunctional learning behavior. This study explores how organizational learning processes occur in a public organization in Macau through the conceptual lens of powers and politics. The findings indicated that while the “power of system” appeared to be the major learning barrier, other types of power, such as “power of resources”, “power of processes” and “‘power of meaning” helped promote the overall sense-making behavior in the organization. We argue that power should be studied in a more positive way. It depends on whether the power holders could make better use of the appropriate source of power to their advantage in order to overcome the learning barriers.