Abstract
Gatekeepers in organizations play a critical role in terms of disseminating and transferring outside knowledge into their groups. This research contributes in identifying the gatekeepers' practices in terms of gathering, selecting, and diffusing knowledge. In the context of Saudi organizations, the exploratory case selected in this research is King Fahad Medical City (KFMC). This research is conducted on Health Informatics and Information Technology employees. A mixed-method design is applied on this research to provide a deep understanding of knowledge interactions structure and the process of knowledge interactions across the organization network. Both methods; questionnaires and interviews are conducted in order to investigate the context. Social Network Analysis method is also used in this research to capture the brokerage network structure position using Flow Betweenness Centrality algorithm. The findings reveal that gatekeepers use different knowledge sharing mechanisms which are: information retrieval, information pooling, pushing, diffusion, collaborative problem solving, and thinking along. In addition, the results present the distinct methods and technologies used by the gatekeepers to collect and share their knowledge with others. The findings of this research help managerial decision makers and strategic managers among start-up organizations and also well-structured organizations to provide valuable insights and decisions in terms of policies, strategies, and the appropriate collaborative tools that foster collaborative working.
Highlights
Organizations viewed knowledge as a significant strategic resource because it represents the core of organizational learning, managerial cognition, and the management of technology [1]
From the pre-interviews that are conducted at the early stage of this research, the researchers get a general view of King Fahad Medical City (KFMC) knowledge sharing environment as well as they get a view of the tools used for work collaboration
The chairman of Non-Clinical System Department explains the reason of using What'sApp in inter-group communication; "„for example, SharePoint is used for managing documents, Outlook is remarkably used for work documentation through emails„text messages„What'sApp especially for standby on critical tasks as it is easy to be set on devices, and it is handy
Summary
Organizations viewed knowledge as a significant strategic resource because it represents the core of organizational learning, managerial cognition, and the management of technology [1]. Capturing the gatekeeper employees is very important because gatekeepers are professionally oriented, technical performers, overrepresented at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy, and they are not formally recognized by the organization [15] Highlighting their practices in knowledge diffusion gives an insight of the best practices in disseminating knowledge across groups within the organizations [16]. The researchers in this study capture gatekeeper employees in King Fahad Medical City (KFMC) using social network analysis (SNA) method. They conduct indepth interviews with the gatekeepers in order to understand the combined views of the structure and the process of knowledge sharing (KS) among groups' knowledge interaction network.
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