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THE ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC

SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS

ADVANCE RESEARCH METHODS

Presented To:
Dr Nisbat Malik

Presented By:
Muhammad Shafiq Bilal
Arslan Ahmed
Muhammad Saddam Kiani

MBA-V, Morning

Submission Date : October 18, 2019

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1. INTRODUCTION

The modern age of Knowledge economy has brought many changes in public
sector. This change has posed a challenge for public sector. This has help to gain
competitive advantage in similar fields. The knowledge base economy has fast
driven of development communication and technology, which has focused on private
sector now transferred to public sector with great emphasis on KM process. Scholars
have argued relevance of KM in organizational effectiveness in developing countries.
Current literature in KM field focuses on certain public sector like banking industry,
small to medium size enterprises, manufacturing organizations mainly with human
services and professional services firms. These studies were conducted in
developing countries in economic and social growth process. As public sector has
started embracing the KM practices. Public sector organizations face great pressure
for representativeness, accountability, responsiveness. Researchers have developed
a relationship between KM and public sector by relating with expertise of knowledge
worker with skillful knowledge sharing. The study further expresses the implications
of KM with different variables.

1.1 Awareness of KM in the public sector

A major component of successful KM practice is raising its awareness not
only to managers at all levels, but also to frontline personnel. The concept of KM
needs to be better understood and benefits much talked about by everyone in the
organisation in order for the organisation to be conducive to the KM practices. The
concept of KM is nothing new. Organizations have always used KM practices (in
various disguises) to make decisions, and to produce goods and services, though
not in a deliberate and systematic manner. Essentially, what is new about KM is the
act of being conscious about the existence of a KM process. Organizations that use
the KM practices without knowledge and awareness of it will not reap the benefits to
its full, if any at all. Deliberately managing knowledge in a systematic and holistic
way can increase awareness of benefits to both individuals and organizations.
However, it is considered by the authors of this paper that there seems lack of
awareness of KM in the public sector. This can be severely hinder to the effective
implementation of KM initiatives in organizations in search of increased performance.
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Therefore, it is vital for an organisation to understand the concept of KM when

starting a KM initiative in order to succeed.
1.2 Comparison of Km in the Public and Private Sector
While literature on KM has been addressing issues, challenges and
opportunities for the private sector, little has been discussed for the public sector.
Programs such as those associated with New Public Management (NPM) suggest
that the public organizations should import managerial processes from the private
sector, emulating their successful techniques. However, critics of NPM argue that the
differences between public and private sectors are so great that business practices
cannot be transferred across. Significant differences in human resource
management policies and practices, the management of ethical issues and decision
processes still exist between the two sectors. However, there is no established body
knowledge on successful management strategies in the private sector that can be
drawn upon by public agency either. Consequently, it is proposed that there is a
need of strategy designed especially for the public sector to be developed to fill the
gaps and for cross learning.
1.3 Importance and Need of KM for Government
The management of knowledge is of increasing importance for governments
in dealing with the challenges created by the knowledge economy. These challenges
are addressed in the following aspects (OECD 2003):
1. Knowledge has become a critical determinant of competitiveness for the
public sector. Service delivery and policy making are the main tasks
forgovernment. In a knowledge economy, governments are increasingly
facing competition in these areas at both international level and national
level. At the international level, for example (OECD 2003), NGOs and
governments are incompetition with foreign organizations delivering similar
service. Research institutes compete to attract the best researchers and
funding while universities are increasingly in competition to attract the
most investments, the best students and the best professors. At the
national level, competition among public bodies is also increased following
the decentralization processes. In the public sector, goods and capital is
not as important as in the private sector, but knowledge is. Knowledge is
an important element of competition and is a central resource of the
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government. Effective functioning of government rests on effective

acquisition and dissemination of knowledge.
2. Private firms produce goods and services that are increasingly intensive in
intangible capital, directly competing with the public sector for the delivery
of goods and services such as education, science, security and
knowledge. For example (OECD 2001), through distance learning,
coaching, information and courses on the Internet, private firm have
increasing influence on the public education and training of citizens, which
was traditionally offered by the public sector. As customers demand and
receive more customization from knowledge-oriented private firms, they
would also expect similar benefits from the public sector.
3. Retirement of civil servants and frequent transfer of knowledge workers
across government departments also create new challenges for the
retention of knowledge and preservation of institutional memory and the
training of new staff. There is also competition for talent with an ability to
share knowledge.
4. According to a report (GAO 2001), approximately 71 % of U.S.
government’s current employees will be eligible for retirement by 2005.
This is not confined to the U.S alone. Most governments are facing the
similar problems. It is estimated in Finland, for example, that until 2012
about 85% of the senior civil servants will leave and that nearly half of the
civil servants will be leaving in 2001-2011. Public organizations need to
tweak their KM initiatives now to start retaining the knowledge currently in
the heads of these employees. Unless this is done, services to the public
will suffer. Thus, capturing tacit knowledge and then training the staff is
important so that it can be passed on to new staff. Increasingly
knowledgeable citizens require governments to be on top of newly created
knowledge, as it is increasingly rapidly produced by more differentiated
actors. KM is based on the idea that an organization’s most valuable
resource is the knowledge of its people. This focus is being driven by the
accelerated rate of change in today's organisations and in society as a
whole. KM recognises that today nearly all jobs involve 'knowledge work'
and so all staff are 'knowledge workers' (Drucker 1993) to some degree or
another - meaning that their job
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depends more on their knowledge than their manual skills. This means
that creating, sharing and using knowledge are among the most important
activities of nearly every person in every organisation. One of the proper
solutions to meet the challenges is to take proactive attitude towards KM
practices prevalent in the private sector and adopt and adapt them to the
public setting. KM has some potential to actually strengthen government
effectiveness and competitiveness in the changing environment. Public
sectors and NGOs have to face these challenges and make good use of
opportunities offered by globalisation, the knowledge-based economy, and
new development of ICT. If it does not, it will mean missing out on
opportunities KM offers.
2. Broad Problem Area

Basically, the problem has generated in public sector by implementation of

KM process .as it a major cause in public sector where the workers hesitate to work
with each other. Moreover, public sector workers have not enough knowledge and
experience to collaborate with each other .KM process has tacit and explicit
knowledge as the public sector employees are not skillful to share within
organizations which hinders the productivity of public sector. Implementation of KM
on right way can improve the performances of public sector.it mainly depends on
effective KM process can improves the productivity of organization with skillful
knowledge worker with efficient sharing in dynamic standard.

3. Problem Statement
Our main Focus is to analyze the role of knowledge management process
which has impact on public sector organizations to consider as the core interest of a
research for knowledge based organizations.as public sector is incapable and
inefficient to implement knowledge management implications. whereas Investigation
shows positive significant relationship between knowledge management and public
sector organizations.

4. Research Aims
The paper investigates the effects of knowledge management process on
public sectors organizations. Also, we identify the moderating effect of knowledge
sharing on public sector with knowledge workers effecting public sectors. 10-year
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data are extracted from the public sectors performances. We expect that there is a
positive relationship between implications of knowledge management and public
sector organizations. Also, there is a significant relationship between knowledge
management with knowledge sharing and knowledge workers by which they further
influence performance of public sector significantly.

5. Research Questions
Following are the few major research questions
1. Under what circumstances employees becomes more skillful and expert in
improving performances?

2. Does implication of knowledge management improve the inability of

knowledge workers with knowledge sharing in public sector

3. What roles public sector organizations play in implementation of KM process?

4. How KM process facilitates the knowledge worker for productive
organization?

6. Objectives
Following are the main objectives of this research paper
1. To empirically investigate the effect of knowledge management process and
knowledge sharing of knowledge workers in public sector.
2. To find out whether the knowledge workers by sharing knowledge will
increase the performance of public sector
3. To explore whether the existing relationship among KM process and public
sector is sufficient or knowledge workers with knowledge sharing is
necessary.
4. To detect the direct relationship between KM process and public sector
organizations.

7. Significance of Study
The study will be quite significant and shows the impact that how implications
of knowledge management and knowledge workers with knowledge sharing
increases the performances of public sectors knowledge management is considers
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as independent variable while knowledge workers is moderating variable which

strengthen the relationship between knowledge management and public sector,
whereas, public sector organizations is dependent variable. As public sector needs
to be implemented for effective KM processes through KM workers otherwise, it will
become difficult to be called it a productive public sector organization.

8. Theoretical Framework

Implication of KM
process

Knowledge Public sector

sharing organizations
workersknowled
ge

9. Conceptual Framework

Relationship between knowledge management and public sector Knowledge

management is the interpreting discrimination exchange of knowledge relating to
business and organization flow out in organization (Hansen, 1999) whereas public
sector organizations that work on small scale relating to different fields with
discouragement to implement KM implications (Sarvary, 1999)knowledge
management provides benefit to public sector on individual and organizational basis
individually they provide employees opportunities to enhance skills experience by
working together and learn from each other. On organizational level increasing the
organizations performances by efficiency, productivity, quality and innovations.
Greater access to employees knowledge help organizations better decisions (CIO,
2001).They treated knowledge assets equal to other traditional assets like capital
and inventory facilities (navy, 2001)

H1: There is a positive relationship exists between knowledge management

and public sector organizations
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9.1 Relationship of Knowledge Worker with Knowledge

Management
Knowledge worker considers as a tool for creating innovative sharing
expressing relating knowledge by employees within organizations (Boyne, 2002)an
effective knowledge framework has to be established with competent workers to
increases efficiency in public sector. (OECD, 2003) (Jussilaninen, 2001)in their study
examined the impact of knowledge management on knowledge sharing behavior of
employees in organizations

H3: There is a positive relationship of knowledge management on knowledge

workers

9.2 Relationship between Knowledge Workers and Public Sector

Organizations

Public sector efficiency can be increased favorable effectiveness of

knowledge worker that lead by the knowledge management process. So, the public
sector organizations are significantly impacted by the knowledge workers by sharing
their tacit knowledge. Employees knowledge sharing capability represents their
desire to improve organization productivity. Sometimes employee’s capability is used
to describe employee’s competency. And this employee’s capability depends on a
complex set of factors such as quality, skills and experience with knowledge which
can directly influence public sector performance
H4: There is a significance relationship of knowledge worker on public sector

10. Research Gap

Despite the expanding body of knowledge and empirical study and research in
public sector according to (barling, 2006) significant of knowledge management still
exists in public sector which leads to advances in understanding and delimiting the
concept (Bowling, p. 2006)Skill and expertise comes with experience (Hershcovis,
2010)as the public sector becomes more unproductive in implementing KM (barling,
2006) (Boyne, 2002)nevertheless there is still research to be made in understanding
knowledge management in public sector with potential indirect relationship of
(moderating and mediating variables)in determining environmental structure.
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