As knowledge-based economy is regarded as one of the essential factors for enhancing national competitiveness in the 21st century, knowledge management also appeared as an important strategy to improve organizational performance in society. The main p...
As knowledge-based economy is regarded as one of the essential factors for enhancing national competitiveness in the 21st century, knowledge management also appeared as an important strategy to improve organizational performance in society. The main purpose of knowledge management in the public sector is to improve both problem-solving and decision-making capabilities. Because it can improve efficiency and competitive advantages of an organization by combining individual knowledge into organizational ones by knowledge sharing.
Until now, knowledge sharing in the private sector as well as the public sector have focused mainly on the studies revealing the influential factors. However, few research has been found on the quasi-public sector existing between the public and the private sectors, but differing from both sectors in many aspects.
The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between factors affecting knowledge sharing through empirical study and further propose policy implications.
The study categorizes various factors into two group: the first is internal managerial factors, and the second is external environmental one. The study confirms casual relationships among seven latent variables by examining theoretical discussions and the preceding studies. Managerial factors are (1)support from the top management, (2)the applications of information technology, (3)appraisal-reward system, and (4)organizational culture, and external environment is (5)management environments. In addition to these, knowledge sharing is adopted as a mediator, and dependent variable is performance. These seven variables constitute a model of structural equations similar to the theoretical models derived from the literature review.
The structural equations model was tested using the survey data of 320 workers in eight quasi-governmental agencies consisting of two types of governmental functions: promotion and regulation (prosecutor and verification). As for the validity test, the study carries out side-by-side testing of exploratory test and reliability test. Also, it uses Cronbach’s coefficient alpha to assess the credibility of the empirical instrument, and lastly, Structural Equation Model (SEM) Analysis is used to examine the hypothesis.
The results and implications of this study are as follows.
First, the support from the top management appears to have its direct and indirect positive effects on knowledge sharing and performance. Emphasis on knowledge sharing and supportive environment by decision makers including CEO stimulates workers’ knowledge sharing, resulting in the positive performance. The support from top management is the most influential factor among five independent variables.
Second, while information technology implication had direct effect on knowledge sharing, it has no significant correlation with the performance. However, there is a positive effect of knowledge sharing, a mediator, on performance, proving that the active utilization of information technology is playing crucial part, as indicated in many previous studies.
Third, appraisal-reward system does not show any direct effect on both knowledge sharing and performance, and had negative indirect effect on performance through knowledge sharing. Contrary to the hypothesis, appraisal-reward system decreases performance through the knowledge sharing. This can be interpreted that the individuals do not recognize appraisal-reward system as an incentive if it is very low. This result requires further empirical study and in-depth discussion.
Fourth, organizational culture and management environment variables have only positive direct effect on performance. Government policy stressing performance oriented management including Public Agencies Management Performance Evaluation System may be reflected by these factors. In addition, atmosphere to stress competition among individuals, teams, divisions in performance oriented agencies may hinder the positive sharing of information among them. However, this interpretation could be controversial, requiring further research.
Finally, the hypothesis, that performance would increase as knowledge sharing as a mediator becomes more active, represents that it has the most significant impact on performance among latent variables.
The results of this study suggest implications for quasi-governmental agencies. In case of quasi-governmental agencies, performance and business processes of government policy or external environment are very influential and also those have direct and indirect effects on knowledge sharing and performance. Furthermore, task performance can be maximized when knowledge sharing effectively used for problem-solving and decision making is permeates in organizational culture. For the right sharing of right knowledge among at the right time, a consistent and long-term effort to create supportive environment is needed rather than short-term, narrow-sighted assessment of performances.