Fostering a Virtual Knowledge Sharing Community in a Malaysian Financial Institution

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the set-up process of cultivating a knowledge sharing community in a financial institution comprising of 500 over employees. The areas that were researched were – what major issues can be identified during the set-up phase, the critical success factors, and way-forward plans to sustain this program. This paper proposes in adopting an IS model in implementing a virtual knowledge sharing community. Conforming to a case study approach, the study investigates the outcomes of a 14-month on-going implementation program, encompassing of strategic discussions and multiple workshops in assessing critical knowledge assets and developing techniques in how best to manage explicit and tacit knowledge, amongst knowledge workers. The valuable insights were focused, in particular on KM training for the newly designated ‘KM Stewards’ who were responsible of driving the organisational KM strategic initiatives and the implementation of a KM capability assessment technique that can be adopted in a financial sector. Special emphasis was made in building the skills in intra-organisational cooperation and management engagement for meeting the challenge of ‘capturing’ and codifying tacit knowledge and ultimately the generation of lessons learned and fostering of virtual communities of practice in promoting a new form of ‘collective intelligence’ in the organisation. With practitioners’ experience in adopting an IS model, this paper will highlight the implementation road map for assessing the usage of knowledge management systems, challenges faced by the KM Task Force, action plans and outcomes with the user community. Finally, this article will be able to contribute to the theoretical knowledge on knowledge sharing in the financial sector of domain. The research methodology is discussed, followed by results and a discussion of the results. Finally, conclusion and future research are presented.