Knowledge Culture and Employee Performance in Public Universities in Kenya

Abstract

The role of university education is recognized as critical since it produces people equipped with the knowledge and skills to make strategic contributions toward the economic development of a country. Universities as ‘knowledge intensive’ organizations thrive on the production and dissemination of knowledge and rely heavily on the human resource component to facilitate, generate and disseminate it. The management of knowledge has become important to the institutions in view of its abundance and this has led to the development of several emerging issues such as the roles played by platforms created for sharing knowledge and cultural factors. Review of literature reveals that the culture of an organization affects how it is able to create a suitable environment to improve the performance of its employees. Knowledge culture represents that part of an organization in which its values, beliefs and norms influence the manner in which knowledge is utilized to attain competitive advantage. A knowledge culture that is supportive in promoting knowledge creation initiatives and sharing of the same is in a better position to build a strong knowledge base. Further review of literature shows that there are limited number of empirical studies that have been done to study the relationship between knowledge culture and employee performance in these institutions. This paper sought to contribute to this growing body of knowledge by determining the nature of this relationship in public universities in Kenya. The study was anchored on the resource-based view. Descriptive survey design was applied and descriptive and inferential statistics used to analyze the data. The target population consisted of 495 employees from 10 public universities in Kenya selected on the basis of their size and age. The study reported a significant and positive relationship between knowledge culture and employee performance when moderated with organizational structure in public universities in Kenya.