An E-knowledge sharing adoption model for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Higher Education

Abstract

In Saudi Arabian universities, knowledge management is often inadequate when it comes to knowledge sharing via Web technology, especially between academic staff. In order to encourage academics to use e-knowledge sharing, it is important to know why/where/when academics do or do not use the available system of e-knowledge sharing. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the factors that affect an academic’s behaviour towards using an e-knowledge sharing system. The proposed model was constructed combining the affecting factors. The list of factors selected is a synthesis of established factors in the current technology acceptance theories, such as expectancy performance, effort expectancy and social influences, with minor changes in the construction of these factors, and two other factors, which are trust in knowledge technology and time expended. These additional factors were included having examined previous research which confirmed that there are relationships between these factors and individual behavioural intention to use an electronic system for knowledge sharing. The methods used in the exploratory study were interviews, expert reviews and questionnaires. Interviews were conducted with 10 academics in Saudi universities to identify factors that are unmentioned in previous studies, then expert reviews were conducted with 30 heads of departments and expert academics in Saudi universities to confirm the factors identified from the interviews. Then an e-knowledge sharing model was developed. The final method used in the exploratory study is the questionnaire, which was conducted with 74 academics from different universities in the western region, in order to confirm existing factors in the e-knowledge sharing model. In the evaluation study, a new questionnaire was used for in-depth investigation of the relationships among factors to complete answering the research question “What is an appropriate model for the adoption of e-knowledge sharing amongst academics in Saudi Arabian universities?” The questionnaire was conducted with 213 participants from 29 Saudi universities. The key findings are as follows: that the relationships between factors were found to have both direct and indirect effects in the model and the result of this study showed that the proposed model fitted the data and applies to the Saudi context. Therefore, the validated model would be considered essential in order to assist Saudi universities in implementing an e-knowledge sharing system.

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