An ISM Approach to Evaluate Critical Success Factors for Knowledge Management in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) government aims to reduce fiscal deficit by improving efficiency, reducing costs, as well as its subsidies. This often calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge. Therefore, knowledge assets must be properly managed to provide an environment for well-informed decisions. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the critical success factors (CSFs) for effective implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) strategies in the KSA public sector organisations. Semi-structured interviews with 42 public sector directors and managers were conducted. Nine key CSFs were revealed. The association between the identified factors is established by employing an interpretive structural modelling methodology. The Matrix of Cross-Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification analysis is carried out for identifying the factors having high influential power. The results indicated that ‘leadership’ and ‘organisational culture’ are the most significant critical success factors having highest driving power. The chapter concludes that leadership plays a key role in implementing KM strategies in the KSA. Leadership is about preparing organisation with a KM vision and values. The findings of this research provide valuable insight and guidance which will help the public sector decision makers to accomplish KM strategies effectively.