buyingKnowledge Management Competence for Enterprise System Success
“Knowledge management competence for Enterprise System success” (Sedera & Gable, 2010) introduces findings of the research for developing practice standards that allow organizations to achieve high levels of Enterprise System Success (ES-success) by focusing on effective ES-related knowledge management in organizations.
While other works studying the relationships between Knowledge Management and Enterprise System success are considered by the authors to be mostly conceptual, anecdotal and qualitative, this study, they believe, investigates such significant relationships quantitatively. The authors of the article note that despite the fact that Enterprise Systems (ES) is the most important development and the top spending priority in the corporate use of Information Technology (IT), many organizations turn out to be disappointed with the results of their Enterprise Systems investments. To respond to this issue, the researchers set the main objective of the study to test the positive relationship between ES-related Knowledge Management Competence (KM-competence) and ES-success.
Their theoretical model, that includes the sources and types of ES-knowledge and the phases of Knowledge Management, is based on prior literature. It perceives the four phases of knowledge management – creation; retention; transfer; and application embracing the full lifecycle of knowledge management activities as dimensions that form KM-competence. Therefore, the authors define KM–competence “as a hierarchical, multidimensional, formative index” (Sedera & Gable, 2010, p.12).
The study empirically tests the hypothesis about relationships between KM-competence and ES-success: raising the organization’s level of ES-related KM-competence will increase the level of success of the Enterprise System. The dependent variable in the research is ES success, that is also defined as multidimensional index that includes four dimensions – Individual Impact, Organizational Impact, System Quality and Information Quality.
The research model is a simplification of a dynamic process of complex interactions between KM-competence and ES- success. It uses the survey data from 310 respondents, which represent 27 organizations, implemented the SAP Enterprise System Financial module. A survey was designed to measure KM-competence as a formative index. The authors used Structural Equation Modeling to evaluate formative construct validation and to test the formulated hypothesis. Statistical methods facilitated the concurrent analysis of the relationship between the phases and their corresponding constructs and the empirical relationships between model constructs. In addition, a post-hoc analysis allowed defining the direct effect of KM-competence phases on the ES-Success construct.
The results presenting in the paper indicate a significant and positive relationship between KM-competence and ES-success. Formative construct validation test confirms the proposed concept of KM-competence as a formative index. The authors argue that the results explain nearly half of the variance in ES-success and infer that KM-competence is the most important factor of success.
Having summarized the findings, the article highlights the main contribution of the research – the conceptualized, operationalized and validated notion of KM-competence as a formative construct. In addition, Sedera & Gable (2010) consider these findings a useful guidance to future research concerning empirical evaluation of relations between KM-competence and its possible consequences.
The paper concludes that the practical implications of the study findings are in providing benefits for concerned organizations derivedfrom the stronger emphasis on ES-related knowledge management competence. The unique importance of all dimensions of knowledge management, demonstrated in the study, necessitates the improvements of any of the KM-competence phases and their combined construct that will bring about improvements at all levels of ESS.