Assessment of knowledge management barriers and improvement strategies on public-private partnership projects in Nigeria

Abstract

Several studies have alluded that many PPP stakeholders lack the required PPP competencies. The incompetence, most times, has failed in many PPP projects in developed and developing countries. One of the main pointers is the lack of knowledge transfer on many PPP projects, which could have benefitted the PPP procurement system. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the knowledge management barriers and improvement strategies for public-private partnership projects in Nigeria. The study used a quota-purposive sampling technique to select 100 construction professionals actively participating in different PPP projects in the study location. The result revealed that the leading knowledge management barriers include recording and tracking information on the PPP project, lack of management support towards knowledge management on the PPP project, and lack of expertise and skill to implement knowledge management tools. The dimensions of these knowledge management barriers are based on the features of PPP and the lack of KM competencies. To overcome these knowledge management barriers, the study showed that improvement strategies such as training and development of PPP stakeholders on knowledge management tools, legislative backing on using knowledge tools for storing PPP projects, and participation/commitment from relevant parties in information sharing need to be implemented. Inferential analysis of the improvement strategies showed that most of the improvement strategies were statistically significant. The study recommended developing PPP and KM competencies through short and long-term training and commitment from PPP stakeholders.