The Criteria for Measuring Knowledge Management Initiatives: A Rare Glimpse into Malaysian Organizations

Many challenges are facing measuring KM initiatives and one of the key challenges is to provide a comprehensive set of criteria to measure success of KM programs. The aim of this research is to address the problem of identifying the criteria for measuring KM outcomes among Malaysia companies and seeks to develop widely-accepted criteria based on the systematic review of the literature in order to measure success of knowledge management programs for Malaysian organizations. Hence, attempts were made to discover the most favored criteria among Malaysia organizations and to investigate the relationship between KM criteria and organization’s mission, goals, and objectives. In addition, the relationship between KM criteria and success of KM programs were examined using regression analysis. The current population study was composed of 79 Malaysian organizations from different types of sectors. According to results achieved by statistical analyses, the most favored criteria among respondents who participated in this survey were enhanced collaboration, improved communication, improved learning/adaptation capability, sharing best practices, better decision-making, enhanced product or service quality, enhanced intellectual capital, and increased empowerment of employees. Finally, it is hoped that the current study provides a better picture for Malaysia organizations to identify and develop a comprehensive set of criteria to measure success of KM initiatives.