Knowledge management: An analysis of knowledge integrator effectiveness in managing organizational knowledge

This research study was a quantitative correlational study. An Internet-delivered knowledge management (KM) survey was sent to 4,027 participants. The sample was taken from business newsgroups and discussion groups. The response rate for completed surveys was 473 (11.7%). The main question addressed by this study was whether organizations are making the best use of their e-mail enablers for KM. This study was divided into three research questions to find an answer to this question. The three questions dealt with the degree to which organizations have implemented e-mail enablers, the degree to which the participants have used the e-mail enablers, and can the participants do more to capture knowledge with no additional cost to the organization. The study did find most (386 or 99%) organizations do not have a complete e-mail enabler KM solution. In fact, only 4 (1%) participants reported a complete solution while 58 (14.9%) reported a solution that is 50% to 85.7% complete. The study found e-mail KM enablers are effective in improving KM. Correlation of several KM variables was completed to see if the e-mail KM enablers were effective in improving KM capabilities. All of the correlations were significant and suggest e-mail KM enablers improve the ability for capturing knowledge. The study found 45.6% of the participants capture more knowledge than previous studies. There were 142 (30%) participants who reported transferring 71% or more of their daily use of organizational knowledge through their e-mail system. There were 74 (15.6%) participants who reported they transfer 61% to 70% of their daily use of organizational knowledge through their e-mail system. Almost all of the participants 469 (99.2%) transfer more than 10% of the knowledge they work with everyday through their e-mail system. Another result of this study was finding the amount of time to perform specific KM tasks using e-mail although this was not the primary focus. The time saved could be translated to dollar amounts by applying the cost per minute to the totals. The cost could then be used to predict an ROI for potential new KM implementations. Potential ROI is calculated in this study.