Understanding individual knowledge seeking behaviors in the context of Knowledge Management Systems

Unprecedented growth witnessed by knowledge economies have resulted in a need for workers who have a learning mindset and are adept at intellectual thinking and problem solving at work. Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) are introduced with the aim of providing knowledge workers opportunities to collaborate, share knowledge, and enhance the innovation capability of the enterprise. However, for organizations to garner competitive advantage there is a need for KMS to be patronized. For investments in KMS to be meaningful, optimizing both knowledge seeking and knowledge sharing behaviors is crucial. While on the one hand, experts need to be encouraged to share their knowledge, on the other hand, seeking behaviors need to be promoted. Extant literature seems to have focused on knowledge sharing behaviors; relatively fewer studies exist on knowledge seeking behaviors. This paper presents a model to understand factors that impact individual’s intention to seek knowledge on KMS. To gain a better understanding of the situational factors that influence knowledge seeking, answers to the following key research questions are sought: 1. Why and when do people seek knowledge at work? 2. Under what conditions does knowledge seeking thrive/happen the most? A quantitative study of the factors that motivate an individual to seek knowledge on KMS is undertaken with the objective of reviewing the effect of knowledge management (KM) and human resources (HR) practices on knowledge seeking behaviors of participants. Such a study is particularly vital post adoption of KMS. The decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB) is the underlying theoretical model on which our study is based. A preliminary questionnaire is discussed, and pilot data collected from 64 participants of a multinational company (MNC) are analyzed to arrive at a conceptual framework. Understanding knowledge seeking behaviors could lead to optimization of the share-seek process leading to better knowledge flow. Results of such an exercise could potentially provide significant insights on interventions that can be developed to enhance adoption of KMS for knowledge seeking.