Academic libraries' knowledge sharing and service innovation: The mediating role of management and IT innovations

Abstract

Like other organizations, academic libraries strive to reshape and rethink their services and skills to preserve their relevance and contribution; innovation is becoming a survival strategy. Besides, knowledge sharing (KS) is believed to be an important factor in creating innovative capabilities and improving innovation. Yet, only scanty empirical research has investigated the possible effect of KS on service innovation (SEI), and empirical evidence on the possible effects of other innovations on SEI is lacking. This study adopted a theoretical framework to analyze the effect of KS on SEI as well as the mediating effects of information technology innovation (ITI) and management innovation (MIN) on the relationship between KS and SEI. The results are derived using a data set from two large academic libraries in Egypt. Although KS has a significant total effect on SEI, its role in augmenting SEI is only secondary since it depends mainly on the mediating role of ITI and MIN. The implications and limitations of these results are further discussed in the paper.