Discussion and findings

67 A few respondents gave no response, or provided examples of poor knowledge transfer strategies.

 No response (13). 13 out of 101 respondents chose not to respond to this question.

 Knowledge is provided poorly or the respondent is unsure of any mechanism (5). “Again, not very well.” “It doesn't yet.” “No formal mechanism in place.” “All together, there's little communication [apart from some documentation provided]” “Not sure I know what you mean by organizational knowledge.”

68 To identify the KM awareness in country wise, we have computed the average of KM awareness questions (AWR1, AWR2, AWR3 & AWR4) to arrive at mean scores for overall knowledge management (KM) awareness on a scale of 1-7 as provided by each country respondents. For measuring awareness, we reversed lack of awareness to awareness and strongly disagree to agree in 7 point Likert scale. In Asia, it is significant that Bangladeshi librarians (mean score 4.87, standard deviation 1.47) has more awareness on KM than other Asian country librarians. We found that most of the Western countries have the high degree of awareness on knowledge management.

Countries like Australia (mean score 4.59, standard deviation 0.86), Canada (mean score 4.44, standard deviation 1.27) and USA (mean score 4.12, standard deviation 1.86) librarians have more awareness than other country librarins. This is in line with past studies, e.g. by Jelavic & Ogilvie (2010) where they did integrative analysis of KM views in Eastern and Western countries and found that Western societies are more aware of knowledge management.

RQ2. How comfortable are they in using social media tools?

More than 43% of the respondents indicated a very high degree of comfort with social media (those who chose 6 or 7 on a scale of 1-7). The mean response for degree of comfort was 5.49 with a standard deviation of 1.16. Thus, the participants were largely comfortable with social media. In case of implementing social media to their libraries, 90% of the respondents replied that they have implemented social networking tools (Facebook, Twitter, Linked & academia) in in their libraries. 89% of the respondents replied that SNT’s are the most frequently used tools to their libraries. Of the 1.3 billion active Facebook users as of early 2014, many of these would be librarians as well. This individual comfort explains why libraries are embracing social media (as found by Kumar & Tripathi, 2010). Users today expect to get the feeds about a library’s service in their Twitter or blog and they expect to get where the library has made content available online.

RQ3. How do these impact their perception of KM-using-social media for libraries?

More than 46% of the respondents perceived KM-using-social media to be highly useful for libraries (responses of 6 and 7, on a scale of 1-7). The mean response for perceived usefulness was 5.75 with a standard deviation of .98. The relatively low standard

69 deviation indicates that the respondents all agreed that KM would be useful for their libraries.

H3 was supported while, H4 found conditional support. The individual degree of comfort with social media (H3) was found to affect the perceived usefulness of KM-using-social media for libraries. This finding is consistent with Agarwal, Xu & Poo (2011) who found an individual's inherent lack of comfort with an information source to negatively affect the amount and order of use of that source. Thus, if a librarian likes using social media technologies, s/he is likely to think it would be useful for libraries overall.

Finally, on its own, lack of awareness about KM (H4) was found to negatively affect the perceived usefulness of KM-using-social media for libraries. If a librarian does not know enough about KM, s/he is unlikely to find KM-using-social media useful for libraries.

However, when analyzed along with degree of comfort with Social media, the effect of AWR on PU was found to be insignificant. This might be because comfort with Social media is based on individual experience (which one can more strongly vouch for), while awareness is more subjective. Thus, between social media comfort and KM awareness, the former is a more important factor for the librarians to be perceive KM-using-social media to be useful for libraries.

RQ4. Based on their perception, how likely is their library to adopt KM-using-social media?

About 37% of the participants strongly agreed that their library was likely to adopt KM-using-social media (mean 5.35, SD 1.15). About 28% strongly agreed that the library was likely to adopt KM-using-social media in the short term, while most of them only showed a slight agreement (mean 4.46, SD 1.68). Kim & Abbas (2010) had earlier compared academic library and user utilization of Library 2.0 features in the KM perspective and found that the adoption rate greatly differs for each Library 2.0 application. Some of the library-initiated knowledge transfer functions (e.g., RSS feeds, podcast) are widely adopted among academic libraries, while some of the user-initiated functions (e.g., Tagging, Wiki, etc.) are at a burgeoning stage.

H1 was strongly supported. The strong support for H1 is intuitive as libraries are likely to adopt KM-using-social media only if they perceive it to be useful. This finding is

70 consistent with the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) where perceived usefulness has been shown to have a significant effect on intention.

RQ5. To what extent is this influenced by the library’s organizational readiness to adopt KM?

The mean value for the degree of organizational readiness was 4.85 (with a standard deviation of 0.91). Thus, the participants did not have a strong opinion on whether they thought their library was ready or not to adopt KM-using-social media, though they tended to think that it was.

However, the reliability of this variable was low (0.7) because it consists of multiple dimensions. We operationalized organizational readiness in terms of knowledge sharing culture (READY1-3; Cronbach’s α = 0.82), top management openness to ideas (READY4), funding (READY5), time to approve new initiatives (READY6), technology support (READY7), willingness to invest time and effort (READY8) and overall readiness (READY9). Analyzing these dimensions separately, 33% strongly agreed that they had a knowledge sharing culture (values of 6 and 7 on a scale of 1-7; mean 5.26, SD 1.21), more than 51% strongly agreed that their top management was open to new ideas (mean 5.4, SD 1.49), only 13% strongly agreed that they usually got funding for new initiatives, with most people disagreeing (mean 3.75, SD 1.62). About 22% strongly agreed that it didn’t take very long to get new initiatives approved, though a big percentage thought otherwise (mean 3.91, SD 1.70). These findings reflect that while top management was open to ideas, they didn’t always provide the money or approve new initiatives quickly. About 33% strongly agreed that they had technology support (mean 4.85, SD 1.4). More than 33% strongly agreed that library staff would be ready to invest time and effort on KM (mean 5.05, SD 1.19). Finally, in the question for overall readiness, 22.77% strongly agreed that their organization was ready to adopt KM (mean 4.69, SD 1.33).

Comparing the means of the 7 dimensions (on a scale of 1-7, where 1 = not ready at all and 7 = completely ready), the pecking order of readiness is management openness 5.4, knowledge sharing culture 5.26, willingness to invest time and effort 5.05, technology support 4.85, overall readiness 4.69, time taken to approve new initiatives 3.91 and funding for new initiatives 3.75. Many of these readiness factors have been identified in prior studies – knowledge sharing culture, (Rahman, 2011), top management support

71 (Kamath, Rodrigues & Desai, 2011) and funding to set up a KM team and infrastructure (Basu & Sengupta, 2007).

H2 found conditional support. The moderating effect of READY and PU on INTN (H2) also found strong support. However, this interacting effect (when analyzed along with the effect of PU on INTN) was found to be insignificant. This could be because usefulness was perceived to be a more important factor than readiness. Also, readiness, as a factor, had lower internal consistency as it had multiple dimensions. This finding held even when we considered only 1 dimension – knowledge sharing culture (READY1-3;

Cronbach’s α = 0.82), where the overall effect was insignificant. Thus, perceived usefulness (H1) has a more important role on adoption than readiness (H2). This finding is in accordance with the TAM Model (Davis, 1989) where numerous studies have found perceived usefulness to affect adoption.

RQ6 & RQ7: How does the library retain and transfer the knowledge of people who leave or resign from the library?

The three strategies of documentation, training and digital repository form the first three rows in table 3.9 below. Table 3.9 summarizes the key findings on knowledge retention strategies for outgoing employees, and the knowledge transfer strategies for incoming employees. The code in the first column of the table is a term used to represent the findings arrived at through the analysis of the data. E.g. the term documentation includes archiving, written policies and procedures, after action review, etc. The rest of the findings for knowledge retention and transfer strategies are also included in the table.

72 Table 3.13 Comparing Knowledge Retention and Transfer Strategies for Outgoing

and Incoming Employees of the Library

Code Retaining knowledge of outgoing employees

Transferring knowledge to incoming employees

Documentation 1) Through documentation, archiving or history of written policies and procedures, or an after action review (36)

2) Through documentation and written procedures (30)

Training 2) Through succession or handover training, an exit interview, mentoring by or shadowing the employee who’s leaving (28)

1) Through training, staff mentoring, orientation or induction program, lectures or workshops (59)

Digital Repository

3) Through a digital repository in the form of a knowledge base, database, intranet, wiki, blogs, digital repository, social networking site or emails (26)

3) Through a knowledge base in the form of a Wiki, intranet or shared drive (26)

Done poorly 4) Retention is done poorly (employees hoard knowledge;

knowledge leaves with them) or the respondent is unaware or unsure of any retention procedure (22)

6) Knowledge is provided poorly or the respondent is unsure of any mechanism (5)

No response 5) No response (16) 5) No response (13) Networking 6) By building in redundancy through

communities of practice or team members working on similar areas as the employee who’s leaving (9)

4) Through networking, meetings or conversations with current employees, answering any question on the job or over email (18)

KM program 7) Through a formal KM program (3) 9) Through a KM program (1) Storytelling 8) Oral history/storytelling (1) 7) Through storytelling (1) Notice period 9) By ensuring adequate notice period

from the employee who’s leaving (1)

Library visit 8) Through visit to other libraries (1)

73 Based on the findings of the study, a few key strategies emerged as important for both knowledge retention of outgoing employees and transferring knowledge to new employees. These were documentation, training and digital repository. While documentation is a useful method in transferring tacit knowledge to explicit (for the outgoing employee), and to find out what’s been documented before (for the incoming employee), a digital repository is a good place to organize and house them. The degree to which documentation is useful is also dependent upon the degree to which it is accessible (see Agarwal, Xu and Poo, 2011 on the role of accessibility versus quality in information seeking). Thus, the role of an accessible and easy to use digital repository becomes pertinent for effective use of the knowledge retained coded in the form of documents. Handover training (for outgoing employees) and induction program, orientation or training (for incoming employees) are both effective ways for the transfer of tacit knowledge. It helps the employee focus on what’s important, where to look, and get access to knowledge that is not documented anywhere or one which cannot be easily documented. As Polanyi said, “….we can know more than we can tell.” (Polanyi, 1966 p.4).