For knowledge managers, an important connection between context and culture lies in how we come to identify the languages that may be in use in an organization. In Part II of this essay, we will look at how this understanding of contexts will help us cut through misunderstandings, improve communication, and begin to shape corporate cultures in knowledge enhancing directions. In Part I of this essay, I proposed that for us to understand and shape our own actions, we need to grow in awareness of the contexts in which we move and recognize their character as particular facets of larger human experiences. This understanding of contexts is particularly helpful when we move from self-reflection to make an effort to communicate something we know. Here, the central problem is one not so much of knowing but of knowing that we know and communicating it to others.
Accurate communication is one of the most challenging human endeavors.
Likewise, our organizational culture may not have any mechanism for us to communicate verbally certain tacit but well established assumptions and practices. These limitations on verbal communication do not mean that we cannot communicate powerfully in nonverbal ways through shared participation or apprenticeship. Indeed, more than just the words we use, it is the combination of verbal and nonverbal clues that shapes the contexts in which communication occurs. Recently, there has been increasing attention to the emergence of communities of practice. This enhancement occurs because by beginning to speak the same language, our tacit frames begin to converge.