Cluster based factors promoting knowledge sharing

Abstract

The achievement of economies in the future will be based on how organizations use, acquire, value and share knowledge effectively and efficiently particularly in knowledge–based organizations such as universities. Furthermore, most organizations are likely to over-emphasize on systems and tools, rather than on the disregarded but important knowledge sharing (KS) preferences within an organization. However, University research groups are knowledge-intensive institutions, where the knowledge creation and distribution are consistently practiced and factors that can play important role in promoting KS should be identified. This paper examined factors that can play important roles in promoting KS among different research groups and grouped it into similar preferences. Survey based methodology was utilized for this study from a population of 330 members of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia’s Knowledge Economy Research Alliance (RAKE). Questionnaire items were designed based on the concepts of factors promoting KS and a two-step Cluster Analysis procedure was applied onto 80 responses received by forming two clusters. The study result examined that respondents in cluster 1 believe that KS can become a culture in university research groups if top management regularly supports and reinforces KS practice while respondents in cluster 2 separately agree that availability of technical documents such as research reports and templates for reference which could promote KS. Further study can be conducted by proposing cluster based academic researcher recommendation approach that can suit academic researchers with different character set of KS and this will enable fully utilization of knowledge.