Knowledge Audit Practices and performance of Public Research Institutions in Kenya.

Abstract

ABSTRACT

In the dynamically changing environment, knowledge is becoming the most important resource for organization performance, even surpassing other resources such as land and capital. Therefore, the ability to retain organisational knowledge is the key characteristic of sustainable improvement in organisation performance. On the contrary, publicly funded research institutions in Kenya, lose experts’ knowledge from retiring employees. Knowledge management in publicly funded research institutions in Kenya seems to be a major challenge contributing to poor service delivery and gaps in work performance. Therefore, this study sought to fill the gap by establishing the influence of knowledge audit practices on performance of publicly funded research institutions in Kenya basing on the knowledge-Based View theory. The study used stratified random approaches to sample 135 respondents out of 6,799 employees in the 12 publicly funded research institutions in Kenya. Both qualitative and quantitative primary as well as secondary data was collected to achieve the study objectives. While qualitative data was analysed through thematic methods, quantitative data was analysed using both descriptive statistics (mean scores, percentages and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Multiple Regression Analysis) through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24.0.

The findings indicated that Knowledge audit practices have a positive significant effect on organizational performance which led to the recommendation of the need for organizations to ensure that they have an effective knowledge audit practice in place that can be used to identify, assess, and improve their knowledge assets. To do this, organizations should develop a knowledge audit framework that includes the definition of knowledge assets, and the processes and tools used to identify, assess, and improve them. They should also leverage technology to capture, store, and share knowledge assets in a secure and structured manner.

Key Words: Knowledge Audit Practices, Performance of Public Research Institutions, Kenya