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The IUP Journal of Knowledge Management :
Barriers and Facilitators to Knowledge Management: Evidence from Selected Indian Universities
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Knowledge Management (KM) is a key ingredient of Research and Development (R&D) organizations and may contribute to enhance the productivity in universities and other organizations involved in conducting research activities. This study shows how researchers from university departments and research centers in India perceive the barriers and facilitators to KM. For this purpose, three domains, namelyknowledge gathering, creation, and diffusion are considered in three dimensions of barriers and facilitatorsindividual aspects, socio-organizational aspects, and technological aspects. Researchers from three universities and their affiliated colleges and research centers situated in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) region were surveyed for studying the barriers and facilitators to KM systems in the Indian context. The findings suggest that researchers are more concerned with individual and socio-organizational aspects of KM, rather than the technological aspect. People and their interactions create knowledge and promote the flow of knowledge.

 
 
 

Knowledge Management (KM) is a key ingredient of Research and Development (R&D) organizations and may contribute to enhance the productivity in universities and other organizations conducting research studies. Park and Kim (2005) in their study on the linkage between KM and R&D management found that although the two are intrinsically close, there exists virtually no linkage between KM and R&D management. It was also argued that the development and implementation of KM for facilitating R&D has not attracted the desired attention of the researchers. Since past few decades, KM has been considered as one of the most emerging research areas. Knowledge creation and knowledge flow for R&D is still nascent and is a new and open field. More specifically, KM in universities and other research centers has more or less remained a little-explored domain.

This paper attempts to examine the facilitation of knowledge flow and knowledge creation in the Indian university system and tries to identify the barriers and facilitators to the KM process in university research centers in an entirely Indian context. A study of this nature is required for two reasons: (1) Universities in general and Indian universities in particular, are facing some serious challenges, such as expansion of their scale of operations, various funding issues, society's expectations to meet with its diverse demands, and most importantly, the need to adapt to the fast-changing information system. These severe challenges require the university system to be proactive with KM initiatives in order to accomplish these challenges; and (2) unlike private profit-making firms, the university research centers are mainly offering their research results to the larger set of audience and focus primarily on basic science research. Facilitating knowledge creation and dissemination to the target audience hence become very important. It is therefore necessary to study the various aspects of KM and its facilitators and barriers in the Indian university system and research centers.

 
 
 

Knowledge Management Journal, Indian Universities, Research and Development, Indian University System, Managerial Orientation, Academic Learning Process, Intellectual Capitals, Knowledge Creation System, Organizational Norms, Organizational Learning, Information Systems, Knowledge Productivity, Human Resource Management, German Research Groups, Computer Applications.