| dc.description.abstract | The management of knowledge is promoted as an important and necessary factor for organizational survival and maintenance of competitive strength. To remain at the forefront organizations need a good capacity to retain, develop, organize, and utilize their employees' capabilities. Knowledge and the management of knowledge appear to be regarded as increasingly important features for organizational survival. To remain at the forefront and maintain competitive edge, organizations have to harness all the resources at its disposal.
The objective of this study was to investigate knowledge management as a strategic tool in Barclays bank of Kenya. In attempting to get the objective, a case study research design was adopted. Eight respondents were interviewed and gave information that helped in arriving at the research objective and conclusion. An interview guide was used to guide the researcher in collecting data. Content analysis was then used to analyze the qualitative primary data which had been collected by conducting interviews and secondary information from the organization.
The study found out that the bank uses knowledge to leverage implicit knowledge and at the same time retaining knowledge of employees as they exit the bank. The increased competency in the bank was attributed to the increased knowledge base of the employees and the effectiveness of learning mechanisms that enable the generation of new competencies in the bank.
The vision of the organization in the development and maintenance of knowledge management was to continuously improve its process and procedures and maintain the knowledge management so as to remain a market leader in the banking industry, to ensure continuity of the bank as the best in the region and investing in a system that handles customer information in a more superior way and continue to invest more on new system in order to effectively manage the information it has and continues gathering more.
There was however some challenges which affected the implementation of knowledge management in a firm. This included situations where the managers in some cases implemented some KM strategies that was not the one suitable in the circumstance, lack of enough e-mails thus not all staff receive all important communications, operations change resulting to some roles been rendered redundant while at the same time changing majority of the others and intense training to re-adjust and change how information and knowledge is handled across the bank.
In addition it was found out that top managers need to realize the internal and external environments for the knowledge management thoroughly for enacting proper strategies for enterprises to successfully implement the knowledge management programs. This study also shows that the implementation of knowledge management structures may not necessarily be driven by the level of awareness of the concept but may also arise from the banks efforts to create knowledge sharing environments and thus gain competitive advantage.
The study should be replicated in other commercial banks operating in the country and the results be compared so as to establish whether there is consistency on use and management of knowledge as a strategic resource and also whether the challenges which were highlighted by the bank as affecting their use and management of knowledge is the same. The study was based on a multinational bank which could have used KM in other countries and have known how to manage the knowledge and also the possible challenges which was encountered | en_US |
