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Harnessing knowledge management to improve organisational performance

Prepared ByDr. Rafat Amir

School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering,The University of Manchester

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Presentation Outline

• What is knowledge management (KM)?• Research methodology • Data collection• Data Analysis• Discussion of findings

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What is knowledge management (KM)?

KM is a set of tools, techniques, methods, ways of working, and desired behaviors which help an organization to be more effective by getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time so that they can make the best decision (Davenport and Prusak, 1998).

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Research Methodology & data collection

• Grounded theory was developed by

Glaser and Strauss in 1967 for the

purpose of building theory from data.

• Data were collected from interviews

with 24 top managers from 19 top-

ranking companies operating in Saudi

Arabia..

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Data Analysis

• Barriers to KM.

• Organizational learning (OL).

• Means of communication.

• Critical successful factors (CSFs).

• Impacts of KM on organizational performance (OP).

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Discussion of findings

1. Barriers to KM• The unwillingness of employees

to participate and share their knowledge.

• People know that knowledge is power, and many people do not want to share what they know.

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Discussion of findings

2. Organizational Learning (OL)

• OL encourages employees to learn by creating a good learning environment.

• Employees must be qualified through training and coaching :

o Training programmes (teaching).

o On-the-Job training (OJT)

o E-learning activities (self learning).

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Discussion of findings

3. Means of communicationExamples of the best communication practices are

oMeetings,

oNewsletters,

oMagazines,

oPublic lectures,

oPresentations,

oEmails.

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Discussion of findings

4. Critical Successful Factors (CSFs)o Top management are the initiators of KM

implementation, and they are also the providers of all necessary budgets, manpower, time and systems. In other words, they will provide whatever is necessary to ensure the success of KM.

o The role of organizational culture is to create an environment that encourage KM activities and sharing.

o A supporting system, which must be easy to use and have all necessary functions.

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Discussion of findings

5. Impacts of KM on organizational performance (OP)

• Retaining a sustainable competitive advantage.

• Making information available, obtainable and accessible.

• Increasing employees’ learning curve.• Learning lessons and solving

recurring issues and problems.• Benchmarking.• Improving organizational

performance and efficiency.

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Discussion of findings

• The employees’ willingness to participate in

KM activities and share their knowledge is

the key factor of the success of KM

implementation.

• This means that organization that wants to

implement KM need to improve the

willingness of employees to participate in

the project, otherwise it will fail.

Theoretical model of knowledge sharing 12

Discussion of findings

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Discussion of findings

The following informant argued that KM enables his organization to double its productivity and decrease the manpower by half.

• “Now after we applied KM …I can get any information within no time and I can do the production plan within an hour…we were have in the factory in Jeddah 460 employees and only six production lines but now after implementing KM and the new system we have now 214 employees and 13 production lines...I mean we doubled our productivity and decreased manpower by half. We have made the system more efficient, which has improved the efficiency of the staff and thus improved the performance of the company”.

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Thank You