INFLUENCE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON ENHANCING SERVICE DELIVERY IN THE BANKING SECTOR IN KENYA: A CASE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN KENYA

Abstract

Knowledge management can help companies improve their service, increase quality of products, reduce costs and faster respond to their customers. The researcher however points out the major challenge of managing knowledge as capturing and integrating knowledge to share among other members of the organization. Success of an organization is in its ability to collect, store, and distribute specialized knowledge to create and sustain competitive advantage. The general objective of this study was to establish the influence of knowledge management practices on enhancing service delivery in the banking sector in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive survey of 43 human resource managers drawn from commercial banks who participated in the study. A census sampling technique method was used and data was collected through the use of questionnaires. The secondary data was obtained from published documents such as journals, periodicals, magazines and reports to supplement the primary data. A pilot study was conducted to pretest the validity and reliability of instruments for data collection. The data was analyzed by use of both qualitative and quantitative methods with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 and excel. The study established that independent variables influenced positively and significantly service delivery in the banking sector. The analysis showed that knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing are positively correlated to enhancing service delivery in the banking sector (Pearson correlation coefficient =.672, .679 and .613). The study recommends that knowledge acquisition to be facilitated through organization adequate planning to capture, and store knowledge, avoid the loss of acquired skills, knowledge and expertise in employees through the retirement of knowledgeable employees to reduce loss of an organization’s valuable knowledge resources , stakeholders to freely share information and knowledge as it will lead to employees improved capability as well as aids in the generation of new knowledge, and use of ICT skills in the organizations , verbal communications or through documents, reports and work procedure, embrace technology to store and share created knowledge in the organizations by making knowledge more active and relevant for the firm by creating values. Additionally, very little has been undertaken to explore knowledge management practices on enhancing service delivery in banking sector reason why the researcher call for similar studies to be undertaken in Kenya for generalization of the findings of this study