Evaluation of Knowledge Sharing Practice in Commercial Bank of Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2011-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
These days the banking sector is operating in a highly dynamic and competitive
environment. Thus, with these driving forces banks are starting to understand the
relevance and importance of financial knowledge sharing. They are beginning to
appreciate knowledge as the most significant and valued assets that lead to organizational
excellence for competitive advantage.
Therefore, the main aim of this study is to evaluate the practice of knowledge sharing at
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia using Nonaka‘s SECI model of knowledge creation and
sharing. Nonaka‘s SECI model consists of Socialization, Externalization, Combination
and Internalization, which is crucial to assess individual, group and organizational
knowledge flow from tacit-to-tacit, tacit-to-explicit, explicit-to-explicit and explicit-totacit,
respectively.
To this end, the necessary data is collected using questionnaire from Commercial Bank of
Ethiopia southern Addis Ababa district and the departments of Human Resource,
Information Technology, Procurement and Outsourcing to get the overall picture of the
knowledge flow in the banking sector. The result of the study revealed that Combination
phase is with low standard deviation value of 1.01, followed by Socialization with
standard deviation of 1.17 and Externalization and Internalization have a similar standard
deviation of 1.22. From this, we can understand that the bank has relatively in a good
position in synthesizing explicit knowledge from the existing explicit knowledge to come
up with organizational knowledge. However, the culture of tacit-to-explicit and explicitto-
tacit knowledge sharing is minimal. The major barrier to share knowledge among
employees of the Bank is lack of time for externalizing existing knowledge and
internalizing new knowledge. As a result, the Bank needs to arrange appropriate time for
enabling knowledge sharing practice among employees. Further research directions are
recommended to enhance knowledge sharing in Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.
Description
Keywords
Knowledge Sharing