The interaction effect of organizational practices and employee values on knowledge management (KM) success

• Published in: Journal of knowledge management 2014-01, Vol.18 (2), p.307-328
• Main Authors: Atapattu, A W M M, Jayakody, J A S K
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Banking; Beverages; Compensation; Emerging markets; Empirical analysis; Employees; Foreign subsidiaries; Hypotheses; Incentives; Information & knowledge management; Knowledge management; Knowledge organization; Knowledge sharing; Learning; Organizations; Recruitment; Sri Lanka; Success; Surveys; Teams; Teamwork; Training
• ISSN: 1367-3270; 1758-7484
• DOI: 10.1108/JKM-07-2013-0276

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction effect of organizational practices and values of employees on KM success in organizations. Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was undertaken covering 207 employees from the IT, Telecommunication, Food and Beverages and Banking industries in Sri Lanka. The data were analyzed with Partial Least Squares (PLS). Findings – Teamwork, incentives for KM and continuous learning influence employee propensity for KM positively. Furthermore, employee self-transcendence and employee openness to change, moderate the effect of both teamwork and incentives for KM on employee propensity for KM respectively. Yet, openness to change does not moderate the impact of continuous learning on employee propensity for KM. Research limitations/implications – A multi-level study which measures organizational practices at organizational level and individual values at individual level is a necessity in order to corroborate the present findings. The type of industry and gender should be further examined since they are found to influence values of employees. Practical implications – Not only organizational practices such as compensation, job design and performance management but also employee values should be aligned to KM. Thus, recruitment and selection as well as training and development become imperative for the success of KM initiatives. Originality/value – This is one of the first attempts to consider individual values in the context of KM and report an empirical study from Sri Lanka from where relatively few studies are reported.