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Impact of Knowledge Management on Organizational Performance

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85990-9_82

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Impact of Knowledge Management
on Organizational Performance

Reem Bayari , Arwa A. Al Shamsi , Said A. Salloum ,

and Khaled Shaalan

Abstract This paper aims to explore the relationship between knowledge man-
agement (KM) and organizational performance (OP). Systematic literature review
was conducted to look at different practices for KM in different sectors and loca-
tions to build a good background about the relation between KM and OP. Many of
researchers investigated the impacts and benefits of knowledge management. There
is a limited literature review on a large scale in different countries and sectors to
confirm the relation between the Knowledge Management and organizational
performance. The result shows that ALL the studies found a significant positive
relation between KM and OP. The best database resource for data collection is
Emerald database. Quantitative method was the most method utilized in examining
the relationship between KM and OP using the survey approach to collect data. The
results displayed that most of the studies considered in the systematic review
conducted in Pakistan. The participants in most of the conducted studies are
employees.

Keywords Knowledge management Organizational performance
Systematic


literature review Quantitative method

R. Bayari
Higher College of Technology, The British University in Dubai, Dubai, UAE
R. Bayari
A. A. Al Shamsi
K. Shaalan
Faculty of Engineering and IT, The British University in Dubai, Dubai, UAE
S. A. Salloum (&)
School of Science, Engineering, and Environment, University of Salford, Salford, UK
e-mail: ssalloum@sharjah.ac.ae
S. A. Salloum
Machine Learning and NLP Research Group, Department of Computer Science,
University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1035
M. Al-Emran et al. (eds.), Proceedings of International Conference on Emerging
Technologies and Intelligent Systems, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems 322,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85990-9_82
1036 R. Bayari et al.

1 Introduction

Over the past several decades there is an intensive works on the knowledge man-
agement such as analyzing the factors, dimensions, strategies, etc. [1]. The rapid
changing in the performance’s standards for the business environment shows that
organization performance has become a key asset for any firms [2–4]. In [5] stated
that Knowledge management is a tool that has the ability to facilitate the flow and
sharing of information within an efficient way. However, the organization’s ability
to manage their assets and resources such as knowledge shows a lot of benefits for
the business environments such as a knowledge sharing, organizing and improving
the organization performance [6]. Therefore, investigation on the relation between
knowledge management and organization performance is a critical issue. By con-
trolling and managing knowledge assets, an enterprise can improves its level and
increase its chances of success and competition with the success organizations.
Knowledge management is an old topic for researchers. Reference [7], many
enterprises stated improved organizations’ performance depends not only on the
assets, investments and strong strategies but also on the strength and effective
knowledge management. Many of researchers investigated the impacts and benefits
of knowledge management. There is a significant gap in the literature on large scale
and different countries to confirm the relation between the Knowledge Management
and organizational performance. Systematic reviews have been conducted in order
to answer the following research questions:
RQ1: Does knowledge management impact on the organization’s performance?
RQ2: How knowledge management affects organization’s performance (Positively/
negatively/neutral)?
RQ3: What are the main research methods that utilized in measuring the rela-
tionship between Knowledge management and organization’s performance in the
collected research papers?
RQ4: In which country the study is implemented and what are the kinds of the
participants in the study?
RQ5: What are the best databases offered research papers in the context of the
relation between knowledge management and performance?

2 Literature Review

The relationship between KM and organizational performance is considered by

managers as a critical issue to the management scholars in different sectors such as
industry and trading even in education. Reference [8], One of the fundamental
objectives for KM is to improve the competitiveness of the firms by utilizing their
existing knowledge, thus firms can stand in a competitive environment. Yuan et al.
[9], Investigated the relationship between knowledge management and organizational
Impact of Knowledge Management on Organizational Performance 1037

performance in enterprise by consideration two dimensions which are KM process

and the impact environmental factors and found both dimensions have positive impact
on the organization’s performance. In addition, Ref. [10], Knowledge Management
has a direct impact on business strategies formulation and implementation and KM
lead to improve organizational performance by enhancing communication, collabo-
ration, learning and adaption. Reference [11], Knowledge Management has significant
and positive impact on IT Investment Success which highly impact organizational
performance and the author achieved the result by using the quantitative methods
utilizing the survey. In addition, Ref. [12], utilizing questionnaire approach shows
Total Quality Management practices such as leadership, customer focus, teamwork,
process management, and information and analysis had a weak positive impact on
organizational performance, while Knowledge Management processes have positive
impact on organizational performance. Shahzad et al. [13], applied his study in
Pakistan and targeted managers in the business organizations sector. The study
indicates that KM strategy has a significant positive impact on organizational cre-
ativity and performance. Mageswari et al. [14], targeted the manufacturing companies
and found Knowledge Management presented significant positive impact on perfor-
mance measures. Jyoti and Rani [15], found High performance work system and
organizational performance impacted positively by Knowledge management.
Reference [16], knowledge management is essential to improve organizations per-
formance. Reference [17], Knowledge Management processes i.e. knowledge cre-
ation, knowledge capture and storage, knowledge sharing, and knowledge application
and use impacted positively and significantly “operational, quality and innovation
performance of public sector in the UAE. Reference [18], KM has a significant
positive effects in growing and learning dimension otherwise it is insignificant [19],
found the KM have positive effects on the human resource performance. Reference
[20], in Iran, KM have a positive effects over the organization’s productivity.
References [21, 22] KM in term of process has stronger link with the OP comparable
to organization infrastructure. Reference [23], Knowledge management lead to get a
unique performance. References [24, 25], show a strong positive relationship between
KM and innovation’s performance. References [26, 27], examined the impact of KM
infrastructure and practices on the banking sectors and found a strong positive rela-
tionship between. According to the results from this literature that focused on
exploring the relationship between KM and OP in different sectors and countries.
There is a gap of this measuring in some sectors and countries. Most researchers work
targeted the employee and managers. The majority of studies applied on the banking
sector while some sectors only has one or two studies.

3 Methods

An extensive literature review is a critical phase before doing any research study
[28]. It helps in establishing a good background for knowledge accumulation, in
order to enables the theories’ extensions and developments, find and fill the gaps,
1038 R. Bayari et al.

… etc. [29]. A systematic literature review is a kind of literature review but more
organized, based on a certain criteria and based on explicit research questions, [30].
In this systematic review, the review was conducted in four distinct phases: the
identification of inclusion and exclusion criteria, data sources and search strategies,
quality assessment, and data coding and analysis. The details of these phases are
demonstrated in the following subsections.

3.1 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

3.1.1 Inclusion Criteria

• Should involve knowledge management and knowledge performance

• Should involve an impact or influence or role or effects.
• Should be written in English.
• Should have methods such as experiments or survey or interview or (interview
and survey)
• The publication dates should be within the period from 2014 to 2019.

3.1.2 Exclusion Criteria

• Knowledge management strategies, knowledge sharing, security/processes/

factors/processes or factors
• Any study that not reflecting the relation between knowledge management and
level of performance.

3.2 Data Sources and Search Strategies

This study based on systematic review, utilize six sub-sequent databases to collect
the research articles. The involved in the articles were collected after an extensive
search of latest studies via different databases: Emerald insight, IEEE,
ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley, and Google Scholar. The search of these studies
was in October, November 2019. The search terms include the keywords
“knowledge management” and “organization/firms” performance”. The selection of
the keywords is an essential step in any systematic review as it determines which
articles are to be retrieved [31]. Using the aforementioned keywords, the total of
retrieved research Articles is 101 articles. 7 articles were excluded because it is
duplicates articles, 61 articles were removed after screening the abstract and con-
clusion, the authors confirmed after assessing full text total number of remaining
Impact of Knowledge Management on Organizational Performance 1039

Fig. 1 PRISMA flow diagram

articles is 20. The finding and filtering research work in this study is followed
developed as (PRISMA)) in [32] (Fig. 1).

4 Results

Reviewing the 20 research papers considered in this systematic review that have
been published since 2014, the findings of this systematic review have been stated
based up on the six research questions.
1040 R. Bayari et al.

4.1 RQ1: Does Knowledge Management Impact

on the Organization’s Performance?

Number of research papers and studies have been carried out to investigate whether
the Knowledge Management have an impact on the Organization’s Performance. In
this systematic review authors reviewed 101 research papers and studies have been
screened and only 20 research papers and studies considered in this systematic
review. These 20 research papers or studies explored to find whether the
Knowledge Management have impact on the Organization’s performance. Figure 2
indicated that Organization’s Performance affected by Knowledge Management.
Figure 2 presents that all the research papers and studies considered in this
systematic review agree that the Knowledge Management have impact on the
Organization’s Performance.

4.2 RQ2: How Knowledge Management Affects

Organization’s Performance (Positively/Negatively/
Neutral)?

Systematic review methods have been applied on number of research papers and
studies that considered the impact of knowledge management on organizational
performance. The main concern of the authors of this study is to investigate how the
knowledge management would impact the organizational performance. After ana-
lyzing selected research papers and studies, it is clear that all of the selected
research papers as well as studies concluded that the knowledge management
positively impacted the organizational performance. This result is represented in
Fig. 3.

Fig. 2 Knowledge
management impact on the
organization’s performance
Impact of Knowledge Management on Organizational Performance 1041

Fig. 3 Knowledge
management impacts on
organization’s performance

This result is aligned along with results from literature review that stated that
knowledge management has significant and positive impact on organizational
performance.

4.3 RQ3: What Are the Main Research Methods

that Utilized in Measuring the Relationship Between
Knowledge Management and Organization’s
Performance in the Collected Research Papers?

When reviewing the selected research papers for the systematic review, the methods
utilized for measuring the relationship between knowledge management and
organization’s performance have been reported. The Fig. 4 below represents that
95% of the analyzed research papers rely on questionnaire surveys (N = 19) for
data collection, while only 5% of the selected research papers rely on both surveys
and questionnaire for data collection.

4.4 RQ4: In Which Country the Study is Implemented

and What Are the Kinds of the Participants
in the Study?

The studies and research papers considered in this systematic review are analyzed
and the following results are reported as presented in Fig. 5. The results displayed
that most of the studies considered in the systematic review conducted in Pakistan
1042 R. Bayari et al.

Fig. 4 Distribution of
researches by research
methods used for data
collection

with 4 studies, followed by Iran with 3 studies. After that India, Jordan and
Palestine with 2 studies for each of them, while for the remaining countries only
one study or research paper was considered in this systematic review. It is important
to mention that all of the studies considered in this research paper indicated positive
impact of knowledge Management on the Organizational Performance as men-
tioned earlier.
Statistics of the participants in the studies and research papers considered in this
systematic review are presented in Fig. 6. It is obvious that most of the conducted
studies considered all the employees (N = 10), 6 studies targeted managerial

Fig. 5 Distribution of studies by country of implementation

Impact of Knowledge Management on Organizational Performance 1043

Fig. 6 Participants in studies and research papers

employees, while IT users, faculty members and University professors and banking
experts participated only in one study or research paper from the studies considered
in this systematic review.

4.5 RQ5: What Are the Best Databases Offered Research

Papers in the Context of the Relation Between
Knowledge Managements and Performance?

Statistics after reviewing studies and research papers considered in this systematic
review represented the best databases that offered research papers in the context of
the relation between knowledge managements and performance. Figure 7 repre-
sented that the best database is Emerald database (N = 7) followed by Google
Scholar (N = 6), after that IEEE database and ScienceDirect both of them offered 3
studies or research papers (N = 3) and lastly Springer database with only one
research paper.

5 Conclusion

The study focused on exploring the researchers work about the nature of the
relationship between KM and OP. Authors systematically review researches and
articles that investigated the relationship between KM and OP. Authors found that
applying KM positively impacted performance of the organizations in all the
research papers in a different sector. Most researchers utilized the quantitative
methods in examining the relationship between KM and OP. There is a slight
difference between the best databases to collect data about the impact of KM on OP
which are Emerald Insight and Google Scholar. Authors reported that a limited
literature review on a large scale in different countries and sectors to confirm the
1044 R. Bayari et al.

Fig. 7 Databases offered research papers in the context of the relation between knowledge
managements and performance

relation between the Knowledge Management and organizational performance. For

future work, authors recommended an investigation on the KM standards, the
factors that affect and limit the efficiency of KM.

Acknowledgements This work is a part of a project submitted to The British University in Dubai.

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