Study On The Relationship Among Knowledge Management Processes, IT Infrastructure, And Organizational Performance

Knowledge is considered as an important resource for enterprises to improve performance and sustain competitive advantage. In the past decade, knowledge management has brought a lot of attention from academic and business communities. An increasing number of enterprises implemented knowledge management and invested heavily in knowledge management systems and relevant information communication technology. However, the result is not as expected by enterprises becaused of not clear identification of knowledge management processes and other reasons. What is exactly the relationship between knowledge management processes and organizational performance? How to carry out knowledge management activities so that we can improve organizational performance? What is the role of information technology in knowledge management activities of enterprises? Although these questions have been discussed frequently in academic field, the discussions mainly focused on logical reasoning and little on empirical study, and cannot effectively combine knowledge management processes, information technology and organizational performance.The above questions are not only related to whether the KM practice could be successful or not, but also an important theoretical problem need to be solved. This paper analyzes and discusses the following 4 questions in the empirical methodology.1. Identify KM content in the perspective of processes, and develop an instrument to measure KM processes. Based on the theory of knowledge sociology, this study identifies the KM content and thinks KM includes four processes. They are: Knowledge Creation (KC), Knowledge Organization (KO), Knowledge Transfer (KT) and Knowledge Application (KA). This study also develops an instrument to measure these four KM processes. This instrument includes 47 items;these items almost covered all the KM activities. The instrument to measure KC process includes four dimensions: externalization, internalization, socialization and combination. 15 questions focus on measuring the conversion of tacit and explicit knowledge inside organizations and activities of creating new knowledge. KO process includes 4 dimensions, they are storage, codification, maintenance and retrieval, 12 questions focus on measuring codifying tacit knowledge, and activities of retrieving, assessing, updating knowledge. The two dimensions of KT process are absorption and diffusion. The 10 questions to measure KT process mainly focus on measuring how the organizations and employeesacquire knowledge and set up the environment to facilitate knowledge sharing. KA process includes two dimensions: leverage and integration. 10 questions to measure this process focus on measuring the methods and purpose of applying knowledge. This instrument provides important foundation for future empirical research.2. As a intermediate-variable, the KM capability moderates the effect of KM processes and IT platform on organizational performance. Based on theory of firm capability, this study proposes a model about relationship among KM processes, IT infrastructure and organizational performance, and introduce KM capability as the intermediate-variable. This model is verified in the context of China. We found that processes of knowledge creation, knowledge organization and knowledge transfer influence the enterprise's KM capability directly, and affect enterprise's performance through KM capability. Therefore we validate the positive relationship between KM capability and organizational performance. KA process is different with the other three and has direct influence on the performance. KM capability and KA process have different influence on different dimensions in organizational performance. Compared with financial benefits and customer orientation, KM capability has more effect on simplifying and improving the business processes, organization learning and innovation. This finding gives a reference for the enterprises to establish an evaluation standard for KM success.3. The four dimensions of KC process have different effects on different level of KM capability. After verifying the effect of KC process on KM capability furtherly, we found that internalization has significant relationship with KM capability at individual level. The activities of this dimension can push employees to codify the tacit knowledge of group and organization to individual knowledge, but has no relationship with KM capability at group level. The activities of externalization and socialization can help to codify and socialize the tacit knowledge. Combination can promote the integration of tacit and explicit knowledge in group and organization. The analysis prove that externalization, socialization and combination have positive relationship with KM capability at group level, but have no significant relationship with KM capability at individual level.4. Test the relationship between IT infrastructure and KM processes, KM capability and organizational performance. This paper validate the important support of IT infrastructure to KM processes, and find that information technique does not affect KM capability and organizational performance directly. This shows that enterprises which want to implement KM, cannot improve performance only through technologies, however it should take action in organizational culture, organizational structure and so on to push the effective implementation of KM and improve KM capability. In addition, this study verifies that the IT has more significant support to internalization and combination in KC process, storage in KOprocess, absorption and diffusion in KT process and integration in KA process, this provide guidance for implementation of KM system and information communication technologies.