Critical role of 'T-shaped skills & incentive rewards' as determinants for knowledge management enablers: a case of Indian study

Critical role of 'T-shaped skills & incentive rewards' as determinants for knowledge management enablers: a case of Indian study

Knowledge management (KM) plays an important role for organisations. It involves activities such as creating, acquiring, sharing and managing knowledge at individual and organizational levels (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). Knowledge and knowledge management are both multi-faceted concepts and activities, and strongly related to cultural background (Bock et al., 2005). In this context, Srinivas (2009) indicates that the theories of knowledge management generated—based on western cultural background—are not necessarily applicable to eastern cultures such as India.
Currently, KM is providing a better understanding of its success factors; and KM approaches are more focused to address particular challenges such as securing knowledge from experts leaving an organisation (Heisig, 2009). However, issues and factors that enable or facilitate an organisation to further enhance its knowledge management are essential elements in the decision making process of managers and executives (Lee & Choi, 2003; Gan, 2006; Khalifa & Liu, 2003; Emelo, 2009). The enablers for organisations in implementing their knowledge management systems were proposed and discussed in the literature (Lee & Choi, 2003; Yu et al., 2004; Robbins et al., 2001). However, most of the studies focused on only few factors.
Therefore, building a theoretical framework to understand these factors and their influences is necessary to form a new starting point for comprehensive understanding (Heisig, 2009). Additionally, researchers indicated that a majority of these factors/enablers were based on western countries—which is different from the Asian context (Chaudry, 2005; Srinivas, 2009).
In a rapidly developing country such as India, where the management system in organisations is markedly different to that of western styles, the question of 'whether the enablers still influence the implementation of knowledge management systems in the same way?' is still under debate. This research issue is significant because cultural issues appear to influence aspects of management decision making. Our review of the literature also indicated there is very limited information regarding KM in the Indian context.

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