An Exploration into Knowledge Sharing in an IT Services Organisation
Sharing and creating new knowledge is crucial for the survival of all IT companies. However, there is a huge difficulty in creating a culture whereby Knowledge Sharing becomes the norm and employees appreciate the importance of collaborating and sharing with the overall goal to increase productivity. The aim of this project is to assess the current internal communications practices in an IT company and evaluate how effective they are in facilitating and motivating employees to share.
The outcome of this project is a set of recommendations on how an IT company can begin to address the problems and improve processes. The evidence is collected via conducting five interviews and analysing 14 responses from employees working in the organisation with particular focus on the problems, best practice and motivation behind sharing.
The interviews have provided considerable evidence of conflicting goals between communicators and knowledge contributors within the organisation. Communicators expressed concern for a lack of employee involvement in sharing success stories whilst contributors (who are also the audience of the Internal Communications in this situation) expressed that communications they receive lack variety and at times they experience information overload. The reason behind this is that in a bid to increase the quality of the knowledge being shared; communication teams are extensively duplicating content, which is not good practice for the communicators as well as the employees as it diminishes the true value of the knowledge being shared.
As a result, managers and employees are worried that the communications practice in place is no longer achieving its aims and something needs to be done to improve the situation. The project outcome is in the form of seven key recommendations that have been presented to representatives from the company.
- 110 pages – 15,000 words in length
- Good user of literature
- Excellent in depth analysis
- Well written throughout
- Includes questionnaire
- Ideal for IT and business students
1 – Introduction
Background
Aims of project
Success Criteria
Method Process Overview
2 – Critical Literature Review
Defining Knowledge Management
The challenge of KS
Social and cultural issues affecting Knowledge Sharing
Impacts of Knowledge Management
Area of Investigation
3 – Research Strategy
Philosophies
Approach
Design
Strategies
4 – Data Collection and Analysis
Data collection process overview
Sampling
Design of interviews
Grounded Theory Analysis
Design of Questionnaires
5 – Findings
Findings at a glance
Discussion of findings
Conclusion of findings
6 – Recommendations
Outline of problems
Outline of recommendations
Revision of recommendations
Feedback on findings
7 – Evaluation and Reflection
Evaluation of project
Review of challenges encountered
Assessment against Success Criteria
Project Plan
Lessons learnt
Further scope
References
Bibliography
Appendices