| The importance of knowledge management (KM) is recognized by organizations, yet KM programs are often unsuccessful. Causes of KM failure may be due to behavior, organization, and technology problems; however, there is a lack of quantitative research that explores the activities related to behavior and KM. One aspect of behavior is based on the theoretical foundations of moral reasoning. The purpose of this relational study was to examine the relationship between an individual's level of moral reasoning and his or her desire to perform knowledge processing activities in order to augment the KM literature. The research methodology was comprised of issuing a two part online survey. The first part was comprised of the Knowledge Processing Proclivity Test (KPPT) to measure the knowledge processing variables of knowledge acquisition, application, codification, and dissemination. The second part was comprised of Rest's DIT-2 to measure moral reasoning. Correlation analysis indicated support for a relationship between an individual's level of moral reasoning and the desire to perform knowledge application. Support was also indicated for a relationship between moral reasoning and knowledge acquisition for female respondents. The strength of association is considered weak for both variables; consequently, further research is recommended prior to applying these findings. Positive social change might be yielded at the organizational and individual level from the insight gained from this research. The ability to predict the most effective job alignment, policy formulation, and/or group training might impact KM behavior, which would lead to improved KM program success. |
