The zeitgeist of knowledge management in this millennium: Does KM elements still matter in nowadays firm performance?

Abstract

The study on knowledge management is in waning trend, which caters less interest in scholars to discuss recently. The area that received widespread attention previously has unlikely become an old-fashioned term which perceived as less important among few organizational researchers. Looking to the trend, the researcher takes an evaluative step to examine whether Knowledge Management is still relevant for organizations nowadays by studying the impact of knowledge management on organizational business performance. The study was conducted in 2016 and it was involved companies in electrical and electronic sector located in Malaysia. In this study, knowledge management was formed from three elements including knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing and knowledge utilization. A total of 287 questionnaires were collected from electrical and electronic companies in Malaysia. The finding shows that among all those three knowledge management elements, only knowledge acquisition and knowledge utilization were still relevant to organizational business performance in Malaysia nowadays, whereas knowledge sharing was perceived to be less important. The findings of this study provide insight into the importance of knowledge management in organizational business performance.