The Role of Organizational Trust in Knowledge Management: Tool & Technology Use & Success

Abstract

The discipline of knowledge management (KM) is no longer emerging, but some organizations are still struggling to find the right approach that will allow them to fully take advantage of their intellectual assets. Having the proper organizational culture remains an important barrier to knowledge management success. This empirical research project, conducted with data from 97 organizations involved in KM, explores relationships between the level of organizational trust and the use of KM methodologies, in particular the use of codification KM methodologies and personalization KM methodologies. The presence of trust can also be used as an indicator of KM initiative success. The contribution of this research may help organizations seeking to launch or adapt a KM initiative to choose which KM tools and technologies to deploy in order to maximize their chance of success. Finally, a rank-ordered list of KM methodologies in descending order of usefulness is reported.