Title: Investigation and prioritisation of cultural barriers against implementation of knowledge management in Kerman Regional Electric Company

Authors: Hamid Khajouei; Mohammad Javad Jamshidi; Hashem Nasrabadi

Addresses: Information Technology Management, Allameh Tabataba'I University, Tehran, Iran ' Information Technology Management, Allameh Tabataba'I University, Tehran, Iran ' Information Technology Management, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran

Abstract: On the way knowledge management (KM) implementation in organisations, there are many obstacles, in which an important one is cultural barrier. Kerman Regional Electric Company (KREC) is selected for identifying and prioritising KM implementation barriers because it is intended to implement it. This research can be, in terms of objectives, categorised as an applied study. Since this research was conducted with the aim to describe the status of KM in the studied organisation and considered data collected through distributing questionnaires, in terms of method, it is a descriptive survey. By analysing multiple studies, six factors (lack of leadership support, lack of trust, lack of an appropriate reward system, lack of cooperation among employees, lack of an appropriate learning system, lack of an appropriate formalisation system) were selected as cultural barriers. And the data were gathered by distributing some questionnaires between employees of the KREC. Data were analysed using Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Spearman and Friedman tests. The effect of all the six aforementioned factors on KM implementation was approved. Among them, lack of an appropriate formalisation system is known to be the most important barrier and lack of an appropriate learning system is identified as the least significant barrier in implementation of KM.

Keywords: cultural barriers; Kerman Regional Electric Company; Iran; knowledge management; KM implementation; culture; leadership support; trust; reward systems; employee cooperation; learning systems; formalisation systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKMS.2016.082344

International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies, 2016 Vol.7 No.3/4, pp.257 - 269

Received: 22 Dec 2015
Accepted: 10 Apr 2016
Published online: 20 Feb 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article