Development and Validation of a Knowledge Management Questionnaire for Hospitals and Other Healthcare Organizations

Ioanna Karamitri,Fotis Kitsios,Michael A Talias

doi:10.3390/su12072730

Ioanna Karamitri, Fotis Kitsios + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072730

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Mar 31, 2020
Citations: 16	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Open University of Cyprus, University of Macedonia

Abstract

Sustainable societies need to consider the connection between knowledge management (KM) and healthcare as a critical issue for social development. They need to investigate how to create knowledge and identify possible predictors of knowledge-sharing behavior that can support a hospital’s sustainable knowledge-management strategy. KM strategies could help managers to increase the performance of hospitals and other healthcare organizations. The purpose of this paper is to present a valid and reliable questionnaire about KM in healthcare organizations. We develop a new knowledge-management questionnaire based on the use of an extensive literature review and health professionals’ consensus. The Applied Knowledge Management Instrument (AKMI) questionnaire was pilot tested and retested on a small group of employees of healthcare organizations (n = 31). After the pilot process, a larger group of health professionals (n = 261) completed the questionnaire. Further investigation resulted in item reduction and verification of the dimensions of AKMI. Finally, we explore the psychometric properties of the developed tool. The developed questionnaire seems to be reliable, valid, and suitable to be used for studying the suggested nine dimensions of KM: perceptions of KM, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, knowledge synthesis and sharing, cooperation, leadership, organizational culture, and barriers. The developed questionnaire can help policymakers and hospital administrators collect information about KM processes in healthcare organizations and this can result in higher performance of health organizations.

Highlights

Knowledge is a valuable resource for the growth of individuals and organizations
This research aimed to develop a questionnaire to understand the concepts of knowledge management and to investigate the organizational factors that affect all aspects of the knowledge creation process within hospitals
This paper describes the process of development and validation of a questionnaire with nine dimensions of knowledge management in healthcare organizations, perceptions of knowledge management, intrinsic and extrinsic motives, knowledge creation and sharing, cooperation, leadership, culture, and barriers

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge is a valuable resource for the growth of individuals and organizations. It represents a cognitive framework that makes possible the meaning and understanding of raw data and information [1] and sometimes leads to wisdom [2]. Scientists distinguish two types of knowledge, explicit and implicit [3,4,5]. Explicit knowledge can be expressed through words, numbers, or figures and represents the tip of an iceberg. Most of our knowledge is tacit, and it is hard to formulate and share. It is what Michael Polanyi [6] said: “We can know more than we can tell”

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