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

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.