Knowledge Management’s Social Dimension: Lessons from Nucor Steel

Abstract To sustain competitive advantage, a company must give people incentives to transfer their knowledge. A look at the innovative steel company Nucor and others suggests how to build a knowledge-sharing environment. A gap exists between the rhetoric of knowledge management and how knowledge is actually managed in organizations. There is widespread awareness of the economic value that creating and mobilizing intellectual capital can unleash. Yet, for most companies, the reality rarely matches the potential. As the CEO of a commercial-services company lamented in an interview, ·we provide pretty much the same services in every location.