An Investigation into Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness in the Nigerian Public Sector through Knowledge Management

As public sector organisations face increasing pressure to innovate, sustain service delivery and improve performance, Knowledge Management (KM) practice is found to be instrumental and potentially useful for dealing with problem that are unstructured, lack one-off solutions and requires managers to create, share and use knowledge across government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and citizen groups. In light of the above, this study explores knowledge management as an organisational strategy and focus on how public sector in developing countries, especially in Nigerian can adopt knowledge management practice for performance efficiency and effectiveness improvement. Due to the nature of the research, interpretivist research paradigm and a case study design was employed with a mixed of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. Three empirical studies were conducted with the Delta State (case organisational) public service in Nigeria. Questionnaires were distributed to 100 employee of the Delta State public service. In addition, semi-structured interview, focus group discussion were conducted with senior employee of the sector, documentary analysis and diary were employed to explore employee perception on the issue of efficiency and effectiveness, knowledge audit and sources (starting point) of inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the Nigerian public sector. The resulting data is analysed at descriptive, exploratory and explanatory level using Content Analysis, Hierarchical Task Analysis, Swim-Lane Sequence Diagram as well as Frequency Count, Percentages and Product Correlation Coefficient. Results adequately identify inefficiency and ineffectiveness, huge gaps and obsolete knowledge within task process and inefficiency and ineffectiveness is introduced even before tasks are carried out. Theoretically, the study significantly contributes to public sector knowledge management as the developed framework (Strat-KM) provides context for the field of KM as well as providing strategy for the implementation of KM as a direct response to addressing inefficiency and ineffectiveness of service delivery in Nigeria and other related organisations. Key words: knowledge management, knowledge management framework, public secto