The effects of organizational size on knowledge management implementation: Opportunities for small firms?

Does size matter? The effects of public sector organizational size’ on knowledge management processes and operational efficiency

Purpose

Firm size is an important contingency variable in macro-organizational studies. Several questions arise in relation to knowledge management and organizational size that is critical to both public and private organizations. Unfortunately, despite its significance, all or most of the studies that examined the effects of organizational size’ on knowledge management have been in the private sector. This paper aims to empirically study the effects of organizational size on the key knowledge management processes and subsequent operational efficiency derived from its implementation in the public sector.

Design/methodology/approach

A structured country-wide survey of United Arab Emirates public sector organizations was conducted. The 383 completed responses obtained were then analysed to assess the hypothesized differences in the implementation of knowledge management processes (knowledge acquisition, knowledge creation, knowledge capture, knowledge storage and retrieval, knowledge sharing, knowledge utilization) and its impact on the operational efficiency across small and medium, large and very large public sector organizations.

Findings

The results revealed that the extent of implementation of all six knowledge management processes and operational efficiency followed an inverted “V” pattern, in which, both knowledge management processes and operational efficiency was found to increase while transitioning from small and medium entities to large entities, but was found to decrease while transitioning from large to very large entities. In terms of relationships, while all knowledge management processes had a significant positive impact on the operational efficiency of the public sector, the ability to derive operational efficiency from knowledge management processes was found to be the highest for very large public sector organizations.

Practical implications

The novel findings are useful for practitioners and policymakers, especially those overseeing a country’s knowledge management initiatives to devise strategies, policies and support mechanisms to ensure public sector organizations, regardless of their size, can implement efficient and effective knowledge management processes to improve their operational efficiency.

Originality/value

The study is arguably the first comprehensive attempt to understand the impact of organizational size on knowledge management in the public sector.

Techniques for the identification of organizational knowledge management requirements

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives using requirements engineering techniques, identifying the optimal techniques configuration and serving as a management tool for knowledge engineers.

Design/methodology/approach

The method is selection attributes. Knowledge management enablers are characterized and mapped with the coverage capabilities of requirements engineering techniques, using the attributes of the elicited object and a box-plot analysis. The information is gathered from 280 references, 32 companies and 16 experts in requirements engineering.

Findings

Requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives are got optimally by combining interviews, use cases, scenarios, laddering and focus group techniques. The requirements of structure and processes are more complex to identify, while culture requirements are the best covered.

Research limitations/implications

Knowledge management enablers are analyzed according to the current studies and comprehension of engineering techniques.

Practical implications

Knowledge engineers need to consider the coverage capabilities of engineering techniques to design an optimal requirement identification and meet the objectives of organizational knowledge acquisition initiatives. Requirement engineers can improve the requirements identification by a staged selection process.

Social implications

The requirements of knowledge management initiatives that impact the community can be identified and traced to ensure the knowledge objectives. Requirements related to culture and people, like shared values, beliefs, and behaviors, are also considered.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about formal requirement identification of knowledge management initiatives in the organizational context, providing the optimal configuration. A novel staged process is proposed for requirements engineering techniques selection, analyzing the enablers at component level and identifying the attributes associated with the elicited object.

Are Faculty Members Ready? Individual Factors Affecting Knowledge Management Readiness in Universities

Knowledge Management (KM) provides a systematic process to help in the creation, transfer and use of knowledge across the university, leading to increased productivity. While KM has been successfully used elsewhere, universities have been late in adopting it. Before a university can initiate KM, it needs to determine if it is ready for KM or not. Through a web-based survey sent to 1263 faculty members from 59 accredited Library and Information Science programs in universities across North America, this study investigated the effect of individual factors of trust, knowledge self-efficacy, collegiality, openness to change and reciprocity on individual readiness to participate in a KM initiative, and the degree to which this affects perceived organisational readiness to adopt KM. 157 valid responses were received. Using structural equation modeling, the study found that apart from trust, all other factors positively affected individual readiness, which was found to affect organisational readiness. Findings should help universities identify opportunities and barriers before they can adopt KM. It should be a useful contribution to the KM literature, especially in the university context.