Knowledge Management Maturity According To Organizational Size: A South African Perspective

The Literature suggests that Knowledge Management (KM) might be doomed to failure. This perception is primarily built on the notion that KM is a fallacy and nothing more than Information Management (IM) while suggesting that there is only lip service for KM but no real support. Defenders of KM’s value tend to mislead by reporting only world-class practices in world-class organizations. To date, few studies have focused on how embedded KM is in the roots of an organization. Specifically, not much is known whether employees and managers hold similar perceptions regarding KM, or if organizational size plays a role in the establishment of KM maturity. This article addresses these research questions by examining the KM maturity of 86 South African based organizations within nine industry groupings. From a large urban South African University engaged in numerous collaboration programs with industry, the authors gained insight into KM maturity in different industry groupings over a five-year period by applying an inventory developed by Kruger and Snyman (2007). In total, 434 employees were interviewed over three grouping levels (operational, middle and senior management). This was achieved by getting 178 senior practitioners to each interview three individuals in each company (one individual at each level). The resulting findings support Moffet and McAdam’s (2006) argument that irrespective of organizational size, knowledge-orientated issues are applicable to all organizations. With significant differences in scores recorded over all maturity sections in South Africa, findings indicated that different sized organizations address knowledge-orientated issues differently. This challenges the Moffet and McAdam (2006) argument that the manner in which knowledge-orientated issues are addressed differ only slightly depending on organizational size. Smaller sized organizations prefer a more personal approach, while larger sized organizations prefer knowledge transfer via technology.