This paper addresses the critical role leadership plays in the implementation and facilitation of knowledge management activities. Leadership is particularly important for organizations willing to 'evolve' their culture to a knowledgesupporting culture. Organizational culture has been identified as the main impediment to knowledge activities, and therefore leaders should model the proper behaviors causing culture to evolve in a way that enables and motivates knowledge workers to create, codify, transfer, and use and leverage knowledge. In the literature this leadership behavior is referred to as 'leading through a knowledge lens'. Leading through a knowledge lens has some special characteristics since it is dealing with knowledge workers having specialized expertise. Leading them can be done only by intellectual power, conviction, persuasion, and interactive dialog. It requires skills that build confidence and engagement. Therefore, leaders should establish trust and commitment that will help the knowledge organization to achieve its knowledge and business goals.

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Many scholars and practitioners claim that a supportive organizational culture can enable the successful implementation of knowledge management (KM) technology initiatives. However, little empirical research has been conducted to de®ne the key organizational culture attributes that support more effective application of KM technologies. In this study, the 44 cultural attributes of the organizational culture pro®le (OCP) and the knowledge management technology pro®le (KMTP) instruments were used to identify and rank the most critical organizational culture attributes that promote knowledge sharing and KM technology implementation success. Data were collected from 26 US organizations that were implementing KM. The results of the data analysis revealed suf®cient evidence to establish a correlation between speci®c cultural attributes and the successful implementation of knowledge management technology and knowledge sharing.

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