Knowledge Management Practices and Employee Performance in Public Universities in Kenya

Abstract

Universities as ‘knowledge intensive’ organizations thrive on the production and dissemination of knowledge and rely heavily on the performance of its employees to facilitate and continually generate and disseminate it. Performance is a multi-component concept and its management has become a strategic focus for public universities in Kenya. This has elicited a broad scope of emerging issues such as the roles played by individual competencies; effect of workforce diversity and work dynamics and growing focus on service delivery as Kenya moves towards Vision 2030. Literature review shows that there are limited number of empirical researches that have been done to study the relationship between knowledge management practices and employee performance. This study sought to contribute to this growing body of knowledge by determining the relationship of specific knowledge management practices with employee performance in public universities in Kenya. Specific objectives focused on the relationships between five knowledge management practices namely: competency management, communities of practice, knowledge mapping, knowledge culture, and organizational learning on employee performance with the moderating effect of organizational structure. Review of literature and identification of knowledge gaps formed the basis of the conceptual model and hypotheses. The study anchored on four theories: resource-based view, knowledge-based view, and human capital theory and intellectual capital theory. The study adopted the positivist research philosophy that tests hypothesis developed from existing theory through measurement of observable social realities. To achieve the objectives, the study used descriptive research design. The unit of analysis was 31 public universities in Kenya. The target population consisted of 26912 teaching and non-teaching staff from the public universities in Kenya. Purposive non-probability sampling method was used to identify a sample size of 227 employees. The study used both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire, based on a five-point Likert type scale. The quantitative data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive data was used to summarize the data while inferential statistics applied multiple linear regression analysis to test the hypothesized relationships. An analysis of the underlying statistical assumptions was conducted by testing for linearity, normality, homoscedasticity, multi-collinearity and auto-correlation. Results shows that jointly, competency management, communities of practice, knowledge mapping, knowledge culture and organizational learning had a positive and significant effect on employee performance in public universities in Kenya. The study findings further revealed that organizational structure is able to moderate positively between knowledge management practices and employee performance if employees in public universities in Kenya feel empowered by it, and if there are coherent communication channels which facilitate information flow amongst employees to enhance teamwork and cooperation. Public universities in Kenya should therefore adopt employee involvement programs to enhance their performance, growth and competitiveness. This study therefore concludes that the collective effect of competency management, communities of practice, knowledge mapping, knowledge culture and organizational learning moderated with organizational structure affect employee performance and by extension, institutional performance is greater than the individual effect of predictor variables.