Study and Analysis of KM Practitioners’ Training Preferences
Abstract: As knowledge management (KM) is considered a multifaceted discipline in Malaysia, KM is still evolving. In fact, the transformation in the Malaysian government’s agenda on the Knowledge-economy has been reflected in the development of the Knowledge-based Economy Master Plan in the year 2001. From the social constructionist philosophical stance, this interpretive study uses the qualitative research approach to explore and investigate the KM practitioners’ training preferences. Employing the case study approach, the researcher used face-to-face semi-structured interviews to understand the phenomenon based on the experience of KM managers of organization XYZ. The findings reveal that as they progress over the years as KM personnel, beside learning through day-to-day experiences, they acknowledge that they still lack some essential KM competencies. The findings highlight six essential KM competencies that are required by any KM personnel which include KM overview, KM tools, CoPs, Knowledge Taxonomy, Information Management and KM Measurement. Without clearly clarifying the level of each competency, they however highlight the issues of its importance, complexity, benefits and implementation and application issues related to the competencies. The findings also highlight the relevance of KM-related training initiatives, which is vital to equip KM managers/officers with appropriate KM ‘technical’ skills. As KM managers’ suggestions and views on KM competencies derive from their involvements in KM initiatives, the KM managers admitted that the required competencies and their involvements have influenced their preferences towards KM-related training. Indeed, most of the KM managers prefer some advanced KM-related courses as well as a certified KM training.
Keywords: knowledge management training, certified training, training needs, KM managers, KM competencies.
Siti Arpah Noordin and Haryani Haron: Study and Analysis of KM Practitioners’ Training Preferences: A Malaysian Case. Journal of Organizational Knowledge Management, Volume 2012 (2012)
Copyright © 2012 Siti Arpah Noordin and Haryani Haron. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License unported 3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that original work is properly cited.