CHAPTER
ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study – – – – 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem – – – – 4
1.3 Objectives of the Study – – – – 5
1.4 Research Questions – – – – – 6
1.5 Research Hypotheses – – – – – 6
1.6 Significance of the Study – – – – 6
1.7 Scope of the Study – – – – 7
1.8 Limitations of the Study – – – – 7
1.9 Definition
of Terms – – – – – – 8
References
CHAPTER
TWO REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Conceptual Framework – – – – 14
2.2 Theoretical Review – – – – – 18
2.2.1 Definition of Knowledge Management – – 18
2.2.2 Roots of Knowledge Management – – – 19
2.2.3 Obstacles to Knowledge Management – – – 19
2.2.4 The Importance of Knowledge Management Systems – 20
2.2.5 Types of Knowledge Management – – – 22
2.2.6 Elements of Knowledge Management – – 23
2.2.7 Drivers of Knowledge Management and Knowledge
Management
Enablers – – – – – – 24
2.2.8 Commercial Knowledge Economic Model within the Firm – 25
2.3 Empirical Review – – – – 28
2.3.1 Knowledge Management and Learning – – 28
2.3.2 Effective Knowledge Dissemination For Growth
And Productivity. – 31
2.3.3 Knowledge Management/Data Base Configuration – 32
2.3.4 Inter-Relatedness of Knowledge Work Processes
and Social Context 33
2.3.5 Knowledge Management and Human Resource
Management – 35
2.3.6 Models of Knowledge Management – – – 36
References
CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction – – – – – – 48
3.2 Research Design – – – – – 48
3.3 Sources of Data – – – – – – 48
3.3.1 Primary Sources of Data – – – – – 48
3.3.2 Secondary Sources of Data – – – – – 49
3.4 Method of Data Collection – – – – – 49
3.5 Population of the Study – – – – 49
3.6 Sampling Procedure- – – – – 50
3.7 Sample Size Determination – – – – – 50
3.8 Sample Size Distribution. – – – – 51
3.9 Validity of Research Instruments – – – 53
3.10 Reliability of the Research Instrument – – – 53
3.11 Techniques of Data Analysis – – – – 53
References
CHAPTER
FOUR DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
4.1 Introduction – – – – – – 56
4.2 Presentation of Data – – – – 56
4.3 Test of Hypotheses – – – – – 63
4.3.1 Hypothesis One – – – – – 63
4.3.2 Hypothesis Two – – – – – – 64
4.3.3 Hypothesis Three – – – – 66
4.3.4 Hypothesis Four – – – – – 67
CHAPTER
FIVE SUMMARY OF FINDING, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Summary of Findings – – – – – 70
5.2 Conclusion – – – – – 70
5.3 Recommendations – – – – – 71
5.4. Suggested Area for Further Research – – – 72
Bibliography
Letter
to Respondent
Questionnaire
LIST
OF TABLES
Table 3.1 Population of the Respondents – – – – 50
Table 4.1: Questionnaire Distribution and Collection. – 56
Table 4.2: Sex Distribution. – – – – 56
Table 4.3: Marital Status of Respondents. – – 57
Table
4.4: Educational Qualification – – – – 57
Table
4.5: Years of Experience. – – – – 57
Table
4.6: Respondent’s Age. – – – – 58
Table
4.7: Knowledge management and performances of organizations. 58
Table
4.8: Knowledge Management and loss of
Knowledge in
Organisations. – – – – 59
Table
4.9: The importance of knowledge management in innovation and
productivity. – – – – 59
Table
4.10: Updated and integrated Management Information System
and
knowledge management. – – – 60
Table
4.11: User friendly communication and information systems and the
spread
of knowledge – – – 60
Table
4.12: Quality of electronic tools and acceleration of knowledge in
organizations. – – – – 61
Table 4.13: Idea developing programmes
and enhancement of knowledge
sharing. – – – – 61
Table
4.14: Enhancement of skills and improvement in Knowledge
sharing – – – – 62
Table
4.15: Constructive feedback and improvement in knowledge
sharing. – – – – 62
Table 4.16 Crosstabulation of response from organizations. 63
4.17 Chi-square Tests – – – – 64
4.18 Descriptive statistics – – – – 65
4.19 One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test – – 65
4.20 Descriptive statistics – – – – 67
4.21 Correlations – – – – 67
Table
4.22: Descriptive statistics – – – – 68
LIST
OF FIGURES
Fig. 2.1: Sources
Mechare S.L and Glinow M.V. [2000
Organizational behaviour, USA, McGraw Hill Companies] – 23
Fig.
2.2: Mare Demarest (1997/Jan:12)
– – 26
Fig.
2.3: Framework of knowledge work
analysis (Effimore, 2004) 33
Fig. 2.4: Organizational Management – – 34
ABSTRACT
The
purpose of this work is to highlight The Effect of Knowledge Management on
Organizational Performance specifically
the study aimed to pursue the following objectives to determine the
relationship between knowledge management and organizational performance; to
evaluate the importance of training and development in the Nigerian
manufacturing sector; to ascertain the impact of motivation on employees level
of commitment in knowledge sharing and to evaluate how E-learning tools affect
knowledge sharing in Nigerian manufacturing sector. The study had a population
of 948 employees drawn from three manufacturing firms in Enugu State.
The sample size of 284 was drawn using Taro Yamane formular at 5% error of
tolerance and 95% level of confidence. Instrument used for data collection was
the questionnaire. A total of 284 questionnaires were distributed while 246
were returned. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study.
Four hypotheses were tested using Pearson statistical package for social
sciences. The findings indicates that knowledge management had positive impact
on performance organization; training and development affected employee
performance positively; employee motivation has positive impact on the ability
to share knowledge, and E-learning tools affect knowledge sharing positively in
Nigerian manufacturing industry. The study conclude that organizations needs to
improve existing skills and acquire new ones via knowledge management so as to
have competitive advantages over organizations that do not practice knowledge
management. The study recommends that Nigerian managers should fashioned out
ways of implementing knowledge management that is most suitable for the
organizations in order to enhance performance taking into consideration the
nature of the organization and culture of the community where the organization
is located and the prevailing situations facing the organization at a time.
CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Knowledge has become a corporate asset that may be the
principal competitive advantage in the global economy. The potential for
success of the companies is closely tied to their ability to innovate and to
develop their ways of production; all this is based on the knowledge assets
possessed by the company [Davenport & Prusak, 1998]. The
current focus and study of knowledge management is not for the sake academics
only, but a realization that knowing about knowledge is critical to business
growth and business survival.
Knowledge,
if properly utilized and leveraged, can drive organizations to become more
competitive, innovative and sustainable. The interest in organizational
sustainability and growth has created much disclosure on the methods of
improving and developing organizational performance, for example process
re-engineering, innovation, and providing and superior customer service.
Furthermore, several strategies appeared to tackle these improvement, among
them was the concept of downsizing, a prevalent strategy in the 80’s, and was
created under the pressure to reduce expenditure and to increase profitability.
The effect of this strategy was the loss of vital knowledge workers, who had
accumulated years of experience and knowledge, and who were forced to leave the
organization because of the downsizing policy. By leaving the organization,
they took valuable knowledge with them. Knowledge dispersed across
organizations is an important source of organizational advantage (Teece 1998;
Tsai and Ghoshal 1999). Knowledgeis often defined in relation to action, e.g.
information transformed into capability for effective action. However, together
with ability to act, knowledge is also just what we know. Consequences of
knowledge include, for example, a capacity to perform a particular task, or a
productive resource or factor in providing competitive advantage. Experience,
intuition and judgement belong to knowledge, which is hence a product of
information, experience, skills and attitude. All knowledge is local and belief
related. It may be defined as patterns of meaning that can promote a
theoretical or practical understanding that enables the recognition of variety
in complexity. These patterns are often developed through a coalescing of
information. If information is seen as a set of coded events, then consistency
occurs with the definition that explicit knowledge is codified (Wise, 2002).
Knowledge management is complex and multifaceted; it
encompasses everything the organisation does to make knowledge available to the
business, such as embedding key information in systems and processes, applying
incentives to motivate employees and forging alliances to infuse the business
with new knowledge. Effective knowledge management requires a combination of
many organisational elements- technology, human resource practices,
organisational structure and culture- in order to ensure that the right
knowledge is brought to bear at the right time. Knowledge
management initiatives in organization are consequently increasingly becoming
important and firms are making significant information technology investments
in deploying knowledge management systems (KMS).
Weber (2007) agree that in order for
organizations to stay in the competitive race knowledge has to be up dated
continuously. Knowledge management attempts to secure and replenish the
learning experiences, as well as the work products, of the individuals who
comprise an organization. Today’s volatile business demands a new attitude and
approach within organizations actions must be anticipatory, adaptive, and based
on a faster cycle of knowledge creation.
Knowledge management can play an
important role to make companies compete productively. Knowledge is a fluid mix
of framed experience, value, contextual information, and expert insight that
provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.
In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or
repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and
norms.
An emerging knowledge-centric view of
the firm describes firms as organizations that know how to do things. This
implies that a firm can best be seen as a coordinated collection of
capabilities, somewhat bound by its own history, and limited in effectiveness
by its current cognitive and social skills. The main building block of these
capabilities (or unit of analysis, if you prefer) is tacit and specific to the
firm (Winter, 1993).
Knowledge is a philosophical concept
defined by Plato as a belief that is supported by an account or explanation
(Blair, 2002). In this context of view of an organization’s knowledge, the
definition indicates the knowledge that comes from increasing the company’s
ability to utilize and a sense of information available to create values for
shareholders (Leiponen, 2006). There has
been much significant growth in knowledge-based school of thought, which shows
that the yield and retention of knowledge can have a positive effect on a
firm’s performance (Maltia & Scott, 1999). To manage the company’s
intangible assets with leverage for the benefits are considered a core
capability. Knowledge management (KM) has aimed at capturing, integrating and
using existing organization knowledge and subsequently creating a knowledge
asset that can be source of sustainable competitive advantage in the long run
(Brooking, 1999; Havens & Knapp, 1999).
Knowledge management has been recognized
as an essential component of a proactively managed organization. The key
concepts include converting data, organizational insight, experience and expertise
into reusable and useful knowledge that is distributed and shared within the
people who need it. Knowledge management addresses business challenges and
enhances customer responsiveness by creating and delivering innovative products
or services, managing or enhancing relationships with existing and new
customers, partners and suppliers, and administering or improving more
efficient and effective work practices and processes. Knowledge management is
about getting knowledge from those who have it to those who need it in order to
improve organizational effectiveness (Armstrong, 2005). Knowledge management
has become a direct competitive advantage for companies selling ideas and
relationship (Ulrich, 1998).
Knowledge management (KM) refers to
range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent, and
distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness, and learning across the
organization. Knowledge management programs are typically tied to
organizational objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of
specific business outcomes such as shared business intelligence, improved
performance, competitive advantage, or high levels of innovation.
Knowledge management is popularized and
has been spread across the industrial and information research world.
Organizations understand the significance of intellectual capital that is
managed efficiently in order to improve the entire organizational performance
by aligning the ability of employees in accordance with the overall business
strategy. The knowledge management focuses on merging people, processes, and
technology together by combining the ability with the objective of providing
corporate knowledge at an organizational standard. Knowledge management is also
about identifying and compiling business information within the business with a
competitive advantage over other companies. The information that is gathered
will be comprised of employee knowledge that makes up their experience in the
field, as well as technological knowledge that various people may have.
Knowledge management is about ensuring that this information is accessible to
anyone within the company who needs it.
An organization that wants to create a
knowledge sharing culture needs to encourage its staff to work together more
effectively, to collaborate and to share lastly to make organizational
knowledge more productive. Davenport
and Prusak (1998, 2000) explain that sharing must be initiated at a human level
and once it is working its application on technology will produce positive results.
The responsibility of effective management is to ensure that prompt and
effective decisions are taken. Management and employees are not only to
increase their knowledge, but share it for the benefit of the organization and
themselves as well. Without motivation, sense of security, healthy reward
system, this cannot be achieved.
However, direct and indirect rewards must be put in place to encourage
knowledge sharing.
1.2 Statement
of the Problem
EFFECT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN ENUGU STATE, NIGERIA
