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The IUP Journal of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Retention Practices Among Administrative Staff: How Equipped Are Public Universities in Uganda?

Article Details

Pub. Date	: Oct, 2022
Product Name	: The IUP Journal of Knowledge Management
Product Type	: Article
Product Code	: IJKM021022
Author Name	: Mary Basaasa Muhenda and Elizabeth Kawuma Lwanga
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Management
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 18

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Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are beleaguered by knowledge loss, occasioned by staff moving to other workplaces, layoffs, and in some cases retirement. Organizations generally prefer to keep resources, including knowledge, that make them distinctive, innovative, and creative in a rapidly changing environment that demands constant renewal powered by knowledge. This critical resource, considered intangible and inimitable and likely to depend on work experience, is highly impacted by changing demographics in workplaces, which are fueled by incessant layoffs and staff attrition and are characterized by knowledge loss, skills, experience and relationships. Given the importance of knowledge, the process of identifying and managing critical knowledge in organizations-with a view to using and reusing knowledge, referred to as knowledge retention-becomes imperative. Yet, HEI have not crafted strategies in the past to retain critical knowledge, contrary to the Transactive Memory Systems theory which underpins this study. Data for the study was collected using a self-administered survey instrument that targeted randomly selected administrative staff from five public universities of Uganda. Purposively selected key respondents were interviewed to complement the quantitative data. Factor and reliability tests and descriptive statistics were the various statistical analyses undertaken using SPSS. The findings affirm low extent of knowledge retention practices among administrative staff in HEI in Uganda. The study also offers recommendations, including a knowledge retention strategy framework.

Introduction

Knowledge is a combination of what people know by intuition and experience, and what has been captured by way of documentation during the execution of duties and conduct of organizational business (Al Kurdi et al., 2018; and Hislop et al., 2018). Recent developments indicate that explicit knowledge is usually codified and formalized, and easy to transfer (Ganguly et al., 2019). Ganguly et al. (2019) and Lin (2017) show that tacit knowledge is personal and contextual, requires physical interaction, and is difficult to communicate, intuitive, unarticulated, and non-verbalized. It has been previously recognized that retention