By the early s, the discussion pivoted to the concept of a knowledge-sharing culture within the workplace. And yet, almost 20 years later, companies are still struggling to adopt knowledge management and knowledge sharing initiatives. Explicit knowledge is the type of knowledge that can be captured and written down. Examples include instruction manuals, lessons learned, written procedures, best practices, and research findings.
A common example cited is usually riding a bicycle. Could you write down instructions for someone to learn to ride a bicycle? Tacit knowledge is more important than explicit knowledge because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences. A certain amount of turnover is healthy and expected, assuming, of course, you are prepared for it.
The mass exodus of baby boomers—also known as the silver tsunami —is both inevitable and unavoidable. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that as many as one out of ten workers will retire either this year or the next. And in an era where every employee is a subject matter expert in something, that puts most organizations in a precarious position.
Turnover can potentially result in:. To prevent knowledge from walking out the door as your workforce retires or leaves it is necessary to have a plan in place. Succession planning ensures new employees have the skills, ability, and knowledge to do the job. There are many components to knowledge management.
It involves changing values and culture, changing employee behavior and work patterns, and providing employees with easy access to each other and relevant information.
A successful knowledge management strategy involves people, processes, and technology. As information continues to grow and spread within the workplace, it is taking longer for employees to find the information they require to do their jobs. Intranet software can help employees capture intelligence, uncover important data, and improve customer service.
An intranet can hold critical information for the daily functions of your business and can provide an effective way to store important intelligence regarding your customers, employees, products, and services.
As knowledge management software, it can also help uncover communities of interest and practice within your workplace. Sharing knowledge through an intranet has a direct impact on productivity. As revealed by consulting firm McKinsey, the use of social technologies can raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25 percent.
As knowledge management software, an intranet aids employees in accessing information to address customer support concerns, resolve problems, and uncovering additional insight.
All of this results in improved customer satisfaction, increased profits, and stronger employee morale. Intranets also allow employees to share information internally by facilitating conversation rather than a one-way communication. This level of open communication prompts discussion and allows subject matter experts to easily share their expertise and insights.
Finally, intranets can support users regardless of their geographical location. So whether your employees are in different countries, continents, or are simply not desk-based, they can still easily access and share information. Corporate data is constantly moving between social networks and emails making it more challenging than ever to manage.
Achieving competitiveness advantage from organizational knowledge requires its accurate management, the so-called knowledge management which currently has an important status in the organizational leadership and management to which researchers have paid particular attention. This is due to the fact that several areas such as philosophy, cognitive sciences, social sciences, management sciences, information sciences, engineering sciences, and artificial intelligence play a key role in the evolution of knowledge management, and as such, several definitions have been proposed.
Ju Choi et al. Pandey and Dutta held that knowledge management entails identifying and exploiting individual and collective knowledge in an organization, in order to contribute to the organizational performance. Knowledge management processes would be useful for problem-solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning, decision- making and avoiding burnouts, and lead to increasing flexibility and organizational intelligence.
Also, knowledge management, if it is well implemented, can contribute to faster and more eficient innovation, more coordination, commercializing goods, responding to the environmental changes, flexibility, eficiency, productivity, and profitability Gold et al. However, no study has yet touched upon the possible impact of knowledge management on the performance of commercial companies in terms of various proposed dimensions.
Identifying its influence on various dimensions of performance would lead to improved performance of commercial companies. Bearing this in mind, the current study primarily attempts to identify various dimensions and factors constituting knowledge management and their relationships with different dimensions of performance.
The study further aimed to present a model for constituent dimensions and factors of knowledge management and their influence on various dimensions of performance. To this end, a review of the existing literature is presented, followed by the method, findings, discussion and conclusion.
During the last decades, knowledge management has been discussed as a scientific concept. Since , several studies have been conducted and developed.
Nowadays, few journals publish articles without mentioning the concept of knowledge management. Knowledge management, as a vital instrument for organizations and society, is of utmost significance. Moreover, the concept has led to transforming knowledge management into an updated term Desouza, Knowledge management is a systematic process involving the creation, collection, organization, storage, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge to create business value and competitive advantage Pandey and Dutta, Several local and international studies have been carried regarding the influence of knowledge management on the performance of organizations, and have illustrated that knowledge management practices positively affect the performance of the organizations.
Yang et al. Gholami et al. They concluded that acquiring knowledge, storing knowledge, sharing knowledge, creating knowledge, and applying knowledge were among the leading factors for knowledge management.
They concluded that knowledge management would have a direct impact on the performance of micro and moderately-sized businesses. For example, those organizations which create new knowledge and widely distribute it across the organization can incorporate it into their technologies quickly and thereby, produce and present new products. Moreover, McKenzie and VanWinkelen highlighted the importance of knowledge as a vital source for organizations which lead to their performance enhancement.
This was also emphasized by Igbal et al. The role and influence of knowledge management on improving organizational performance have been specifically identified in numerous studies, such as Hosseini et al. The significance of knowledge management is not only confined to performance of knowledge-based companies in high-tech industries but is also important to all economic sectors Teng and Soung, Commercial companies also significantly enjoy the benefits of knowledge management Byukusenge et al.
The importance of commercial companies, especially in the economies of developing countries such as Iran, is twofold. Commercial companies pursue income by buying and selling goods and services. Byukusenge et al. The key role of knowledge management in gradual innovation is taking advantage of the knowledge properties.
Radical innovations are those which deform and reform the competitive condition among firms. The main role of knowledge management in radical innovations is recombination of the knowledge properties while creating new ideas and exploring new knowledge. As such, this study further aimed to present a model for constituent dimensions and factors of knowledge management, and their influence on various dimensions of performance.
Several models have been proposed for describing knowledge management processes in the existing literature. The review of literature indicates that knowledge management entails creating, storing, sharing, and using knowledge.
These processes are described below:. Knowledge Creating: Creating knowledge includes using internal and external resources of an organization to create new knowledge in order to achieve organizational objectives. Knowledge Storing: Storing knowledge encompasses recording and keeping knowledge which makes it possible to retrieve individual and organizational information. Technical systems e. Storing knowledge can effectively contribute to protecting organizations from the negative impacts of duplication, repeating actions, and solving present and future problems Stein, The best form of storing knowledge is creating an organizational memory.
Organizational memory is a warehouse or system including details about previous decisions and their results, previous crises and organizational reactions and other decisions. Knowledge Sharing: As soon as organizational knowledge is obtained, coded, and stored, it should be shared. The staff members should be asked to share their knowledge, and they should be ensured that this would not negatively influence their organizational position and status, and thus would increase their respect among their colleagues and counterparts Mohapatra et al.
Knowledge Utilization: This entails using existing knowledge for making decisions, improving organizational performance and achieving organizational objectives. Indeed, organizational knowledge should be applied in services, processes and products of an organization Tarlatt, This seems to be a challenging issue for organizations. Developing an effective framework for implementing knowledge management before applying it can be influential. Such framework acts as guidelines which illustrate the key components to effective application of knowledge in organizations.
The infrastructural factors of knowledge management refer to a set of mechanisms through which an organization manages its knowledge. Individuals share their knowledge in various sectors through these Infrastructural factors so that everybody can effectively use it. The review of literature reveals such important Infrastructural factors as organizational culture, leadership, information technology, and organizational processes.
These are all illustrated below:. Organizational Culture: Sharing knowledge at all levels, from face to face individual interactions to collective knowledge sharing, and even sharing knowledge in virtual teams, which are all highly moderated by cultural factors.
Knowledge sharing processes, particularly implicit knowledge sharing, requires social interactions which are in turn formed in a cultural context including values and beliefs. These determine behavioral and normal patterns. Organizational culture in general, and organizational subcultures in particular, can make a significant impact on processes related to knowledge in four ways: 1 culture forms the assumptions revealing which type of knowledge is useful, 2 culture moderates the relationship between individuals and organizational knowledge, 3 culture provides a context for social interaction, and 4 culture influences the creation and adaptation of new knowledge.
Organizational culture may facilitate or debilitate sharing knowledge. Leadership: Leadership is an impetus leading knowledge management strategies in an organization. Knowledge management leadership is assessed in terms of knowledge management policies and strategies in an organization. Moreover, leadership is assessed in terms of actions taken to create a relevant context to knowledge management behaviors in an organization Young, Information Technology: Information technology IT is a key factor which influences the implementation of knowledge management.
A wide range of IT-based instruments exist, which make a tremendous impact on knowledge management, including the intranet, extranet, content management systems, document management systems, data warehousing, data mining, and portals, etc.
Organizational structure and procedures: Organizational structure and procedures can make an impact on the knowledge management through forming the patterns and influencing the frequency and intensity of communication among members of an organization. Furthermore, knowledge management can impose a structural effect on the effectiveness of an organization since it influences the eficiency and effectiveness of daily routines Zheng et al.
The more flexible the organizational structure and procedures are, the better they can be adapted to the changes related to knowledge management. Furthermore, the lower the number of hierarchies an organizational structure has, the less it would be enabled to foster communication among individuals and units, and to facilitate knowledge sharing and flow Du Plessis, According to the sections 2, and , a theoretical model has been developed to show how knowledge management affects the performance of commercial companies Figure 1.
Figure 1 Theoretical model of the study. The metrics of the theoretical mode of the study are presented in Table 1. Many of these metrics have been extracted from the knowledge management framework of the Asian Productivity Organization APO Young, Table 1 Metrics of the theoretical model of the study. The method of the current study included two stages: 1. Documentary and library method to access the existing theoretical viewpoints on knowledge management and review of related literature, 2.
Survey to gather the required data, to describe and illustrate the questions and the research theoretical model. The statistical population consisted of the staff members in Tehran. The multi-stage stratified sampling method was used and the participants were selected through appropriate stratification for the proportion. In this way, five commercial organizations strata in Tehran were selected.
The final participants were staff members of these organizations. The demographic characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 2. Table 2 Demographic characteristics of the research sample. The instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire including 65, 5-point Likert scale items. The research variables had a suficient degree of content validity.
Content validity is commonly checked by the experts in the field, and relies on their judgment Khaki, , p. In the current study, six experts in the field of knowledge management were asked to comment on the first draft of the questionnaire and all had consensus over 65 items of the questionnaire. Reliability indicates the internal consistency of the instrument. In order to assess the reliability of the instrument used in the current study, the construct reliability was checked through calculating Cronbach alpha.
The standard construct reliability coeficient should exceed 0. The Cronbach alpha coeficients for the components of the questionnaire were as follows: knowledge processes 0. Cronbach alpha coeficients for all research variables were more than 0. In order to analyze the gathered data, descriptive and inferential statistics were used. To gain descriptive statistics, the table of frequency and questionnaire components, SPSS was used.
To test the research hypotheses, SEM and Lisrel 8. In this section, descriptive statistics for variables of organizational performance have been provided. Table 3. Table 3 Measures of central tendency and dispersion for variables of organizational performance. The measures of central tendency, mode, median, and mean have approximate values for organizational performance which represents a normal distribution. As Table 3 displays, the minimum and maximum scores for organization performance were 81 and , respectively and the total score was Accordingly, the range of normal distribution was Most of the respondents had an organizational performance score of Half of the respondents has an organizational score of less than or equal to and half of them had more than this score.
The average score of the organizational performance of the statistical sample was Taking into account the standard deviation, the distribution score of the organizational performance variable was dispersed at A general evaluation of organizational performance variable and its five dimensions indicates that the approximate values of this variable and its dimensions to the normal distribution accounts for the optimal status of this variable in the organizations under the study.
Structural Equation Modeling SEM is a technique for analyzing the data which was designed for evaluating the relationship between two types of variables: a. Explicit variables variables which were directly measured and included observed variables; b.
Implicit variables variables which were the theoretical constructs. Compared to other data analysis techniques, SEM makes it possible for the researcher to test the complicated theoretical models in an analysis. The most distinguishing characteristic of SEM is simultaneous processing and analysis of the relationships among variables.
SEM allows the researchers to conduct a simultaneous causal analysis of the implicit and observed variables. When SEM is used, an important component is evaluating the fit of a hypothetical model or observed data. Researchers commonly use goodness of fit indices for evaluating this fit. In general, goodness of fit indices is divided into two categories: a. The higher values are more desired. The suggested value for these indices is 0.
The lower values indicate a more desirable fit. In order to answer the fit model, both goodness and badness indices should be examined. These indices are illustrated below Toit, H. RMR: This index is the root mean square of residuals and its closer value to 0 indicates a better fit.
NFI: It is an index for assessing the goodness of fit model considering the data. If it is more than 0. CFI: It is a comparative fit index and values more than 0. NNFI: It is non-normal fit index and values more than 0. RFI: It is a relative fit index and values more than to 0. IFI: It is incremental fit index and values more than 0. SRMR: It is the standard root mean square residual and its closer value to 0 indicates a better fit of the extracted model.
Taking advantage of SEM, it was attempted to examine the causal relationship among the implicit variables and their relationship with their relevant indicators explicit variables. First, dependent and independent variables and their indicators as explicit variables were separately examined to ensure that appropriate indicators were considered for the implicit variable.
In the current study, knowledge management was considered as the external implicit variable and organizational performance was considered as the internal implicit one. Taking into account that data analysis based on fit indices and according to the presented reasoning in SEM is the basis on which decisions on the accuracy of the proposed hypotheses are made. All indices were calculated. Figure 2 Analysis of knowledge management indices paths X1-X6 and organizational performance indices Y1-Y5.
This model is not different from that the real data. This could be through in-person tutoring, company-wide training sessions, online chats and group discussions - or a mix of those options and others. For expertise location to be an effective aspect of a knowledge management system, there must be a searchable matrix built that allows for documentation of competencies.
With text-based knowledge management, a system to store, categorize and navigate subjects is necessary. Threads, subforums and groups can be divided by topic, level of expertise or any number of other classifications.
Creating an environment where learning is considered an asset will drive employees to continuously educate themselves. Incentivizing them to take advantage of your knowledge management systems will result in upskilled employees who are ready to take on leadership roles in your organization. For this to happen, there must be structured and accessible learning and development technology in place that employees can use.
Looking at the actions taken, the results of those actions and the lessons learned can be extremely valuable and allows for lessons learned to be fully documented and archived. These online seminars can be very helpful in widely disseminating ideas throughout teams, branches or the entire company.
Knowledge management must be prioritized within the company, and an ethos of sharing knowledge must be built into the DNA of the company and incentivized. There needs to be a clear system for all steps of knowledge management, while also leaving room for innovation. Technology supports knowledge management, allowing knowledge to be searched for, found, and accessed within knowledge management systems. Technology also allows people to communicate better. Without this step, instituting knowledge management systems will be a battle.
Organizations that take full advantage of knowledge management are better able to react quickly to changing market conditions, offer better services to their customers and increase their innovation and efficiency.
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Knowledge Management. Knowledge Hub. Download Guide. Skills Matrix Template Download skills matrix template and map your employees' skills. Download Template. Updated August 11, Discover: What is knowledge management? Importance of knowledge management Benefits of knowledge management Knowledge management process Knowledge management methods Knowledge management best practices What are knowledge management systems?
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