An Empirical Examination Of Factors Influencing Work-unit Knowledge Management Effectiveness In Organizations

The true importance of knowledge and Knowledge Management in today's organizations cannot be overstated. Unlike many of the other types of capital that appear on an organization's balance sheet, existing knowledge more-readily lends itself to "recycling" to generate new intellectual capital for the benefit of the organization. If we are to take full advantage of the existing knowledge within an organization, then we must develop and implement strategies and policies to manage the knowledge environment.
The question of "how" knowledge management is implemented and employed to create value within organizations has been studied in recent years. These studies evaluated knowledge management styles, enablers, and processes with respect to their impact on organizational performance as well as the structure of the organization itself. Although a number of these previous studies attempt to address knowledge management at the work-unit level, none of them included rigorous measurements of the work-unit characteristics. This dissertation provides a proposed model integrating much of the previous research and extending it to the work-unit level, providing a structured approach for gathering the research data and performing the analysis to confirm the premises that relationships exist between these variables at the work-unit level. Because knowledge generation and knowledge sharing primarily occur at the work-unit level in organizations, this research should have significant implications for both researchers and practitioners in the development of effective knowledge management strategies and approaches. The organizational environmental variables studied (Learning Culture and Information Technology (IT) Support) were found to produce a significant positive influence on knowledge orientation. These environmental factors should be considered by researchers and practitioners alike, and should be included in planning future studies and organizational design to optimize performance with respect to knowledge workers to promote effective knowledge management within the work-unit.
This research combines frameworks from several reference disciplines to provide a cogent model upon which to continue building toward a complete understanding of the relationship between knowledge management orientations, the task environment, and explain how both sets of work environment variables are inextricably linked to the KM organizational effectiveness factors of knowledge quality and knowledge management satisfaction.