Knowledge management structure and human capital development in Indian manufacturing industries

Abstract

PurposeOrganizations are constantly striving to develop and enhance knowledge of employees who involve in strategic business processes by which they aim for an organizational knowledge creation to achieve a competitive advantage. Accordingly, they encourage employees to involve in basic knowledge management (KM) processes and establish infrastructure, particularly, supportive culture and communication facilities for knowledge acquisition and sharing in order to broaden both human capital and organizational knowledge base. In this direction, the purpose of this paper is to develop a hierarchical structure of KM that aims to develop or create human capital in an organization and empirically analyzes the model fit with the data.Design/methodology/approachData are collected from 401 employees of Indian manufacturing firms. Factor analyses for identifying and validating the structure of KM and regression analysis for examining the associations of KM dimensions with certain demographic characteristics of employee and organization are performed.FindingsOrganizations show KM concepts' demonstration on developing human capital through tactical KM process and problem‐solving approach, communication‐oriented culture, and innovation‐supportive culture. The results confirm the theoretical hierarchical structure of KM with data. In addition, these dimensions are moderately associated with certain characteristics of employees and organizations.Research limitations/implicationsFirms, which are small and medium in size and particularly private‐owned, create human capital through a hierarchical KM structure.Originality/valueThis paper analyzes the instruments of KM in view of creating human capital.