An integration of information technology, culture of knowledge transfer and innovative work environment in support of organisationsal knowledge creation activities

Abstract

Knowledge management and knowledge creation is recognized to be of supreme importance to the competitive advantage of organisations as well as a major agent of change in the new era of the knowledge economy. This study empirically examines knowledge creation activities in the context of the banking industry. It extends the work of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) and others on the theory of organisation knowledge creation by introducing the information technology infrastructure as an enabler of knowledge creation condition (ITISKCFs), accompanied by the culture and infrastructure of knowledge transfer. The research questions asked are: 'What are the characteristics of an IT infrastructure that enhance the knowledge enabling conditions, whether IT infrastructure capability can be define for knowledge creation? and 'What are the shared effects of the culture (CKT) and the infrastructure of knowledge transfer (IKT) when combined with IT infrastructure on knowledge creation activities?' A positivistic approach is adapted using quantitative data. A survey aimed at the middle managers of the financial services industry population was conducted in an effort to investigate the knowledge creation activities and to examine the relationship of knowledge enabling factors to the time spent on knowledge creation activities. Theoretical developments on organisational knowledge creation and knowledge enablers are presented and discussed. A conceptual framework is developed based on the theory and hypotheses which were generated. Variables of the research model are operationalised using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the data are analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results of the data analysis suggested that ITISKCFs support the activities of tacit to tacit, explicit to tacit and explicit to explicit knowledge transfer, thus leading to the creation sympathised, systemic and operational knowledge. While ITISKCFs fail to support the activities of tacit to explicit transfer and, hence, failing to support the creation of conceptual knowledge. CKT is a significant enabler of the activities aimed at explicit to explicit and explicit to tacit knowledge transfer. IKT have failed to support the activity of tacit to tacit, tacit to explicit transfer, and only one element of IIKT (IIKTK& S) was a significant enabler of explicit to tacit, thus unable to support the creation of sympathised, conceptual knowledge and partially supported operational knowledge. While CKT fail to support the tacit to tacit transfer and, hence, the creation of sympathised knowledge, it was the only enabler of the conceptual knowledge; however, the statistical test suggested a significant but weak relationship