The Contribution of Technological Factors on Knowledge Sharing Quality among Government Oficers in Malaysia 239 The Contribution of Technological Factors on Knowledge Sharing Quality among Government Oficers in Malaysia

Knowledge management is an emerging discipline with many ideas, discussions and researches that need to be explored (Beckman, 1999). It is multidisciplinary in nature dealing with managing knowledge in organizations (Andersson, 2000). The concept was coined by Karl Wiig during his keynote address for United Nation’s International Labour Organization in 1986 (Beckman, 1999). To date, many researches on knowledge management in organizations have been executed worldwide. However, studies on knowledge sharing particularly in public sector in Malaysia are still handful (McAdam & Reid, 2000; Syed Ikhsan & Rowland, 2004). A number of studies in Malaysia limit their scope on antecedents of knowledge sharing or knowledge transfer (Ismail & Yusof, 2008; Syed Ikhsan & Rowland, 2004) from individual, organizational and technological perspectives. It is not evident that empirical research has been conducted to identify the relationship between technological factors and knowledge sharing quality in government agencies except that by Syed Ikhsan & Rowland (2004). However, the study was conducted on one agency only. Therefore, the results of the study could not be generalised to other government agencies. Syed Ikhsan and Rowland (2004) suggest that public or private sector need to manage knowledge to ensure that the organization could take full advantage of organizational knowledge. Prevalently, the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006) reported that there is lack of information/knowledge sharing among government agencies. Why? To answer the question, it is important to investigate factors that hinder public employees from sharing their knowledge particularly technological related factors. Thus, the objectives of this paper are:  To investigate technological factors that influence knowledge sharing quality among government officers.  To identify the most important technological factor that influence government officers’ knowledge sharing quality. 15