Knowledge management practice in South Asian higher education institutions

Abstract

The investigation reported in this paper intended to explore the research on knowledge management in higher educational institutions in South Asian countries. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify, select and retrieve relevant scholarly literature, by following a detailed protocol and a systematic data extraction strategy. The findings of the study showed that limited research on knowledge management in the context of higher educational institutions was conducted in both theoretical aspects and practical implementations, denoting an imperative to conduct more research in this area. The findings also disclosed that multiple factors affect the knowledge management practices among primary higher educational institution agents: faculty, administrative staff, and information professionals. As the result of the analysis of the literature review findings, a conceptual framework is proposed, which is expected to provide a good foundation for future research as well as pave the way towards more successful knowledge management implementations in the higher educational institutions in South Asia and beyond.

Keywords

Higher educational institutions knowledge management South Asia systematic literature review

Introduction

Higher education (HE) has been acknowledged as an essential driver to create and disseminate knowledge through research; provide educational service to surrounding communities; and assist society in cultural, social and economic development (Khorasgani, 2008). The HE sector has grown very significantly in terms of research, teaching and learning in the last two decades in South Asian countries (Marginson, 2011). In the region, HE is greatly influenced by countries’ historical past and nation-building efforts, as well as techno-economic global trends. In countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the HE sector is structured in a similar fashion where apex regulatory bodies, University Grants Commissions (e.g. India) or Higher Education Commissions (e.g. Pakistan) play a key role as regulators, policy advisers and licensees for higher educational institutions (HEIs) (Intelligence Unit, The Economist, 2013).

Contemporary HEIs of the world recognize their valuable intelligence and have adopted their changing role in society (Laal, 2011) by devising policies for the effective management of their knowledge assets (Toro and Joshi, 2013). Therefore, knowledge is considered as one of the critical elements (Gill, 2009), that through its effective sharing and utilization (King, 2009), enables HEIs to become competitive, innovative and sustainable (Poonkothai, 2016). Moreover, globalization, competition and contemporary technological infrastructure have had strong impact on the management practices of HEIs (Gill, 2009). Consequently, the management and sharing of knowledge have increasingly been considered essential for the growth of HEIs (Areekkuzhiyil, 2016) and have raised the need to implement knowledge management (KM) strategies and infrastructures in these institutions (Toro and Joshi, 2013).

Knowledge is a mixture of experiences, values, contextual information and expert insights that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). KM is defined as ‘the effective learning processes associated with exploration, exploitation and sharing of human knowledge (tacit and explicit) that use appropriate technology and cultural environments to enhance an organization’s intellectual capital and performance’ (Jashapara, 2004: 12). KM in organizations has remained a well-discussed topic since Nonaka (1994) proposed his dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. In his work, he furthered the work of Polanyi (1966) and elaborated explicit and tacit knowledge. He mentioned that explicit knowledge is transmittable in formal systematic language. In contrast, tacit knowledge is hard to formalize and communicate because it is deeply rooted in action, commitment and involvement in a specific context (Nonaka, 1994). Individuals construct tacit knowledge during their professional activities and experiences at the workplace (Nunes et al., 2006).

In organizations, knowledge is available in multiple formats such as printed documents, best practices, learning about best ways to do jobs, intelligence embedded in the organization’s products, processes and relationships (King, 2009). KM facilitates all the knowledge-related activities like knowledge creation, capture, transformation and use within an organization among individuals and groups (Bhatt, 2000). The core value of KM is to manage personal expertise and make it widely available as an organizational resource (Newell et al., 2009).

Similarly, like business organizations, HEIs as knowledge-based environments create, manage and disseminate knowledge within and outside of their boundaries (Gera, 2012; Othman and Skaik, 2014). In HEIs, knowledge is generated through multiple human activities such as the processes of teaching, examination, evaluation, admissions, counselling, training, research, consultancy and management of activities (Dhamdhere, 2015; Ranjan and Khalil, 2007). The knowledge can be in different forms like facts, opinions, ideas, theories, principles, models, experiences, values, contextual information, and faculties and staff insights (Adhikari, 2010). From a holistic perspective, knowledge in HEIs can be differentiated between academic and organizational knowledge (Coukos-Semmel, 2003). For the success of HE, it is important that the knowledge created, stored and shared by each of the agents contributes to the effectiveness of an entire system (Rowley, 2000).

From the HEIs perspective, KM is explained as a set of practices that help an institution to improve teaching, research and administrative roles and encourage the concerned stakeholders to use and share data and information in decision making (Petrides and Nodine, 2003). In practice, it can be seen that HEIs create knowledge during their academic and administrative processes and are trying to make policies to manage tacit and explicit knowledge to improve knowledge sharing (KS) and effective decision making within institution (Kumar, 2015). Therefore, in order to get maximum benefits from the knowledge assets, the HEIs’ administrators are required to understand the importance of intellectual capital and its management (Coukos-Semmel, 2003).

From the HE perspective, the study by Hawkins (2000) claimed that in the past, KM was considered as a function performed by librarians only. And this was a reductionist view that not only disregards tacit knowledge but also assumes that all knowledge created in HE is stored in an academic library. According to Masa’deh et al. (2017: 2), ‘KM gained more importance as a topic worth researching due to the potential role in contributing to the success of organizations in general and HEIs in particular’. Toro and Joshi (2013) also emphasized that there is a need to review old paradigms, and explore new KM players in academia, so that new KM frameworks can be explored and proposed.

In the developing world, KM research is positioned at an emerging stage (Asrar-ul-Haq and Anwar, 2016). Many authors have pin-pointed that the HEIs located in South Asian region, e.g. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, are facing several issues for managing their physical and knowledge-based assets (Haider, 2008). The institutions in the region are trying to make policies and encouraging the concerned stakeholders to take an active part in minimizing the barriers and promoting successful KM practices (Abass et al., 2011; Bhusry and Ranjan, 2011b; Dhamdhere, 2015; Islam et al., 2014, 2015; Ranjan and Khalil, 2007; Shreemali and Rathore, 2011). Considering the growing trend of the importance of KM in the HEIs of the region, this study aims to undertake a systematic literature review (SLR) of literature, describing the importance of knowledge as a sustainable competitive advantage in the academic world in South Asia, and organizing the research identified and found relevant into a framework that may be useful to boost South Asian HE organizations in the contemporary global society.

Research objectives

According to the stated aim, the research reported in this paper intended to achieve the following three objectives:

Explore the trend of KM research in the HEIs of the South Asia region;

Explore the locus and focus of KM research in the HEIs in the region, and;

Explore the factors that have an impact on KM practices in the HEIs of the region.

Methodology and design

The research was conducted by following the SLR general strategy proposed by Nunes et al. (2009) and the specific protocol suggested by Jesson et al. (2011). The approach adopted consists of the following steps:

identification of keywords;

production of search queries;

definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria;

identification of relevant databases;

the query for databases and selection of relevant documents, and;

analysis of the dataset selected.

Identification of keywords and production of search queries

As the focus of this review was to explore KM research in the HEIs, so four keywords were selected: (1) knowledge management, (2) knowledge sharing, (3) tacit knowledge, and (4) explicit knowledge. To these keywords, South Asian-specific keywords were added to create search strings (Figure 1). After this, a structured search was carried out in the generally used and well-established databases, namely, Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, ProQuest, and Google Scholar.

Figure 1.

Research keywords and queries.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

A structured search was conducted in the world-renowned scholarly databases, to extract relevant records published from 2007 to 2016. Additionally, a manual search was carried out using backward and forward citations of the articles retrieved from the structured search. The studies which include the keywords; ‘higher education institution’, ‘university’, ‘university administrative staff’, ‘staff’, ‘employees’, ‘faculty members’, ‘faculty, ‘library’, ‘information professionals’ and ‘librarians’, and published in the English language were included in this study. The literature from the student’s perspective and the literature which was deemed not to fit the study scope were excluded from the review. The SLR adopted the specified period mentioned above and, as such, studies published before or after that boundary were not included. In the first step, 779 records were retrieved from the scholarly sources through the structured search. After screening the titles and keywords of the retrieved records, 76 items were found relevant. In the second step, 44 items were extracted through backward and forward citations technique. Finally, screening abstracts, duplication check, and due to the unavailability of 10 full-text research records, SLR identified 50 full-text records that were potentially relevant to this research (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Studies selection procedure.

Limitations of the study

This study is limited to the research published during 2007 to 2016. Moreover, the research reported in the paper includes only the studies published in the context of faculty, administrative staff and information professional/librarian.

Research findings

The following section reports the research findings that address the objectives of this study.

KM research trend

The first objective of the study addresses the trend of KM research in the HEIs of the South Asia region. Figure 3 shows the distribution of all the selected studies in the period from 2007 to 2016. The findings revealed that the trend in KM research was increasing until 2011, with an unexplained exception of 2008. After 2012, the numbers of published research seem to stabilize except for 2014.

Figure 3.

KM research trend.

Out of 50, more than half (29) of the studies were conducted in Indian HEIs compared to Bangladesh (10) and Pakistan (9), while only two studies were reported from Nepal. No study was found from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka. For a better understanding of the data, year-wise detail of the studies is depicted in Table 1.

Table 1.

KM research status in the HEIs of South Asian countries.

Country	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Bangladesh	–	–	–		1	3	1	3	2	–
India	2	–	3	4	5	3	4	–	4	4
Nepal	–	–	–	–	1	1	–	–	–	–
Pakistan	–	–	1	1	2	–	3	–	1	1

Locus and focus of KM research

To achieve the second research objective, the locus and focus of the studies were explored. Firstly, the locus of the studies was identified from the perspective of faculty, employees, librarians and institutional policies. The analysis presented in Table 2 revealed that most of the studies were conducted focusing on librarians (24), followed by faculty members (12), institutional context (8), administrative staff (3), and finally faculty and staff taken as a homogeneous group (3).

Table 2.

Locus of KM research in the HEIs of South Asian countries.

Research subjects	Reference
Faculty Members	Santosh and Panda (2016); Shaikh and Akhtarasha (2016); Shahzadi et al. (2015); Munir et al. (2013); Islam et al. (2013); Agarwal et al. (2012); Gautam (2012); Mamta and Jayanthi (2012); Pudashine and Rana (2011); Lodhi and Ahmad (2010); Madan and Khanka (2010); Doctor and Ranachandran (2007)
Administrative staff/Employees	Iqbal (2015, 2016); Abbass et al. (2011)
Librarians	Poonkothai (2016); Rao (2016); Dhamdhere (2015); Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islama (2015); Islam et al. (2015); Ali and Khan (2015); Khan (2014); Islam and Khan (2014); Islam et al. (2014); Shah and Mahmood (2013); Nazim and Mukherjee (2013a, 2013b); Yadagiri and Kumar (2013); Hoq and Akter (2012); Mostofa (2012); Siddike and Munshi (2012); Sheeja (2012); Siddike and Islam (2011); Nazim and Mukherje (2011); Gaikwad et al. (2011); Rah et al. (2010); Aswath and Gupta (2009); Raja et al. (2009); Shahid (2009)
Faculty and staff	Bhusry and Ranjan (2011a, 2011b); Khan et al. (2013)
HEIs	Kumar (2015); Sagar and Kim (2015); Bakshi (2013); Ranjan (2011); Shreemali and Rathore (2011); Adhikar (2010); Mikulecky and Lodhi (2009); Ranjan and Khalil (2007)

The following section presents the findings retrieved from the selected studies of this review. The findings are explained concerning existing KM practices and their benefits, followed by key challenges and considerations needed for successful KM practices in the HEIs.

The findings showed that the institutions need to develop KM policies to enable effective sharing and management of knowledge. Among the core HEIs actors, faculty members played a pivotal role in publishing research, teaching materials, providing consultation and conducting other professional activities in addition to their teaching assignments (Islam et al., 2013; Santosh and Panda, 2016). Increasingly, the use of technology in teaching and learning caused universities to transform how explicit knowledge is produced, stored, disseminated and appropriated by the organizations. Researchers indicated that faculty members were fully aware of the importance of KS, but they were focused mainly on teaching activities and sharing of learning resources (Islam et al., 2013; Shahzadi et al., 2015), while for sharing of research knowledge, in tacit and explicit form, multiple methods were in use such as books, journals articles, conference presentations and papers, informal discussion and sharing of research findings (Santosh and Panda, 2016). Furthermore, the research studies investigated factors relevant to individual behaviour, group behaviour and organizational policies that play a central role in shaping faculty members’ positive behaviour towards sharing of knowledge (Agarwal et al., 2012; Islam et al., 2013; Lodhi and Ahmad, 2010; Shahzadi et al., 2015; Shaikh and Akhtarasha, 2016).

The findings exposed that library and information science (LIS) professionals possess adequate knowledge of KM and have the ability to put them in a better way to improve their practices (Rao, 2016). So, it is suggested that LIS professionals should take an interest in KM and its application to offer state-of-the-art information services and facilitate improved retrieval and transfer of information (Dhamdhere, 2015; Siddike and Munshi, 2012). Moreover, they should consider technological, organizational, environmental and individual factors impacting KS practices of academic librarians (Nazim and Mukherjee, 2013; Shah and Mahmood, 2013; Islam and Khan, 2014; Siddike and Islam, 2011; khan, 2014).

The potential areas of KM applications in libraries are found to be reference and information services, policy and decision making, administrative services, and planning of information service (Nazim and Mukherjee, 2013). Information professionals can derive benefits from being an expert in KM in the form of increased job opportunities (Ali and Khan, 2015) and better career prospects (Nazim and Mukherjee, 2013).

KM practices in HE libraries can be followed through brainstorming, open discussions, sharing of ideas, organizing workshops, conferences, mentoring and identification as well as collectively addressing problems and finding solutions (Poonkothai, 2016). Also, multiple platforms, such as portals, gateway websites, intranets, telephones, instant messenger, groupware, digital warehouses and web conferencing support in KS (Islam, 2015 et al.). Finally, academic librarians are seen to play a fundamental role in the training of all HE staff, including their staff in developing skills that are perceived to be related to KM, such as information literacy, IT skills and information services use (Raja et al., 2009).

Researchers mentioned that the academic and non-academic staff hold a diverse type of knowledge and most successful institutions are those in which KM practices become part of everyone’s job (Mikulecký and Lodhi, 2009). Therefore, HEIs should develop and adopt policies that integrate administrative and academic KM approaches using people, processes and technology (Kumar, 2015; Shreemali and Rathore, 2011). Effective KM practices result in the development of sustainable competitive advantage of institutions (Madan and Khanka, 2010), bringing organizational effectiveness (Khan et al., 2013; Munir et al., 2013) and sustainable improvement of organization performance (Mikulecky and Lodhi, 2009).

Researchers disclosed numerous challenges confronting KM practices in the South Asian HEIs, such as culture of organization, trust, personality characteristics, personal qualification, motivation level, training programmes and information technology, collaborative environment, HRM practices, motivational factor, reward, IT infrastructure, KM policies, communication channels, organizational policies (Abass et al., 2011; Adhikar, 2010; Agarwal et al., 2012; Bakshi, 2013; Islam and Khan, 2014; Islam et al., 2013; Khan, 2014; Lodhi and Ahmad, 2010; Nazim and Mukherjee, 2013; Ranjan, 2011; Ranjan and Khalil, 2007; Sager and Kim, 2015; Shah and Mahmood, 2013; Siddike and Islam, 2011; Shahzadi et al., 2015; Shaikh and Aktharsha, 2016).

To address the challenges confronting KM practices, researchers emphasized that institutions should develop KM policies to enable effective sharing and management of knowledge. In this regard promoting of KS among the actors in the institutions with the support of an institutional repository (Doctor and Ranachandran, 2007) and support of the respective local government and HE commissions for implementing KM initiatives at an institutional level should be included (Iqbal, 2015; Mikulecký and Lodhi, 2009). At a broader level, it was proposed that creating an education network with the support of all stakeholders of the institutions will also enable KS between stakeholders at different institutions in the region (Pudashine and Rana, 2011). Bhusry and Ranjan (2011a: 40) also suggested that ‘IT-based KM intervention in HEIs can prove to be a promising techno-management tool to enhance performance in the vital areas of teaching and learning, research and administrative services’. In another study, they proposed that an IT-based KM framework could enable faculties and staff to capture, structure and disseminate institutional knowledge in a better way (Bhusry and Ranjan, 2011b).

In summary, research on KM is growing in the South Asian region; however, research on KS between university academia and administrative staff is still scarce in the region.

Factors affecting KM practices

The study also addresses the factors that have impact on the success of KM in the HEIs of the South Asia region (Research objective 3). Once identified, these factors were clustered into three main categories: (1) individual, (2) organizational and (3) technological (Table 3).

Table 3.

Factors affecting KM practices in the HEIs of South Asian countries.

Factor	Reference	Count
Individual
Attitude, intention	Islam and Khan (2014); Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015); Santosh and Panda (2016); Shahzadi et al. (2015); Yadagiri and Kumar (2013); Kumar (2015)	6
Awareness of KM	Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015); Islam et al. (2015); Khan (2014); Nazim and Mukherjee (2013)	4
Trust in KM	Santosh and Panda (2016); Khan (2014)	2
Self-efficacy and self-esteem	Shah and Mahmood (2013); Shahzadi et al. (2015)	2
Individual motivation	Shahzadi et al. (2015)	1
Job security	Khan (2014)	1
Enjoyment in helping others	Shahzadi et al. (2015)	1
Willingness for cooperation and collaboration	Islam and Khan (2014); Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015)	4
Capacity to deal with change	Poonkothai (2016)	1
Capacity to deal with information overload	Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015)	1
Capacity to capture knowledge	Poonkothai (2016)	1
Adequate expertise	Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015); Poonkothai (2016)	2
Management skills	Khan (2014)	1
Organizational
Organizational structure	Agarwal et al. (2012); Siddike and Islam (2011); Kumar (2015)	3
Culture	Agarwal et al. (2012); Hoq and Akter (2012); Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015); Santosh and Panda (2016); Siddike and Islam (2011)	5
Qualified and skilled staff	Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam, 2015; Islam et al., 2015; Islam and Khan, 2014; Yadagiri and Kumar, 2013, Rao, 2016; Kumar, 2015	6
Leadership and management support	Khan (2014)	5
Adequate reward scheme	Gautam (2012); Santosh and Panda (2016); Khan (2014); Kumar (2015)	4
Training scheme	Islam et al. (2015); Khan (2014); Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015); Nazim and Mukherjee (2013)	4
Adequate budgets	Islam et al. (2015); Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015)	2
Organizational initiatives	Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015); Siddike and Islam (2011)	2
Existence of opportunities to share knowledge	Gautam (2012)	1
KM policies and strategies	Agarwal et al. (2012); Gautam (2012); Dhamdhere (2015); Shreemali and Rathore (2011); Poonkothai (2016); Dhamdhere (2015)	6
Adequate HRM practices	Siddike and Islam (2011); Iqbal (2015)	2
Outcome expectations	Shahzadi et al. (2015)	1
Technological
IT infrastructure	Agarwal et al. (2012); Poonkothai (2016);Islam et al. (2015); Mostofa and Mezbah-ul-Islam (2015); Islam and Khan (2014); Khan (2014); Yadagiri and Kumar (2013); Hoq and Akter (2012); Shreemali and Rathore (2011); Siddike and Islam (2011)	10
Communication channels	Islam et al. (2015); Islam and Khan (2014); Khan (2014); Santosh and Panda (2016)	4
Technical support	Gautam (2012); Islam and Khan (2014); Santosh and Panda (2016)	3

Discussion

General synthesis and discussion of findings

The literature has established that KM is gaining importance in the HEIs located in the South Asian region, and the KM practices are beneficial to the HEIs in multiple ways. The diverse types of knowledge in HEI, organizational, teaching and research knowledge, is vital for bringing effectiveness in organizational working (Khan et al., 2013; Munir et al., 2013), improvement in organizational performance (Mikulecky and Lodhi, 2009) and ultimately developing competitive advantage (Madan and Khanka, 2010; Munir et al., 2013). Organizational effectiveness in HE institutions through KM practices can be achieved in multiple ways. Likewise, KS support the HEIs in decision making in different areas such as curriculum development, improving competitiveness for research grants, applying best practices and using technology (Howell and Annansingh, 2013). In the same vein, HEIs are struggling to achieve a competitive advantage to attract talent as well as compete for government funding. Therefore, they are promoting KS practice, which provides benefits to them for utilizing their knowledge resources in a better way (Al-Kurdi et al., 2018).

Competitive advantage is of a changing nature, and mostly depends on the incorporation of knowledge into all of an organization’s activities (Corcoran and Duane, 2018). Therefore, in order to bring effectiveness in work routine, improving organization performance and competitive advantage, HE institutions are trying to develop policies for managing and sharing tacit and explicit knowledge by applying KM techniques for people, processes and technology (Kumar, 2015; Shreemali and Rathore, 2011). In this context, HE regulatory bodies of the South Asian region are playing a supportive role by maintaining standards for quality education in the HEIs. So, their role is considered vital in devising institutional policies for innovative initiatives.

The growing trend of research on KM and its benefits enabled the policymakers to rethink their management policies. Mainly the research in the context focused on the sharing of knowledge among actors of the HEIs. Besides these, some studies identified the status and outcomes of KM initiatives. Dhamdhere (2015) indicated that Indian institutions had started realizing the importance of KM and thinking about managing their knowledge assets in better ways. Although KM is at initial stages in the institutions, it has been acknowledged to be a strategic asset for the success of the institutions.

In practice, KM implementation cannot be successful until it gets support from all the concerned stakeholders of the HEIs as well as from the government regulatory authorities. In this regard, the HEIs core actors, e.g. faculty, administrative staff, librarians and students, collectively form a community and they are required to play their vibrant role in KM implementation (Hawkins, 2000). Furthermore, the integration among all the actors, provision of technological infrastructure, and needed skills are essential in this respect (Islam and Khan, 2014; Ranjan, 2011; Ranjan and Khalil, 2007). On the other hand, some countries in the region such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, are still far behind in the state-of-the-art technological infrastructure (Marginson, 2011).

In South Asian HEIs, academic staff are as seen active players of KS (Islam et al., 2013; Santosh and Panda, 2016), and quite familiar with technology usage in teaching activities and sharing of research and learning resources (Islam et al., 2013; Santosh and Panda, 2016; Shahzadi et al., 2015). Faculty members possess higher qualifications and avail multiple opportunities for knowledge generation, sharing and dissemination during their professional activities; hence, they are more open towards KS culture within and outside the institutions. From the administrative staff perspective, they shared their knowledge with their colleagues and are seen as influenced by human resource management practices (HRM) during their KS practices (Iqbal, 2015, 2016).

Librarians are facing challenges due to the information revolution and ever-changing demands of contemporary users. It can be seen worldwide that 21st-century academic libraries have extended beyond the walls of their institutions for open access information spaces, dealing with intelligent Internet sharing tools and online social communication, and networking technologies (Tait et al., 2016). Libraries in the HEIs seem to be well equipped and able to address the needs of their users, and similarly, librarians are well aware of the benefits of KM and its application. However, in the case of Bangladesh, it can be seen that they are not qualified enough to perform the tasks effectively (Islam, 2015; Rao, 2016). Similarly, from the Pakistani context, Shah and Mahmood (2013) mentioned that KM in academic libraries is at the initial stage, and most librarians do not have sufficient knowledge about its applications. These issues can be addressed by hiring qualified librarians (Aswath and Gupta, 2009) and training the existing professionals through continuing education in the form of lectures, conferences and workshops through which they may be able to brainstorm ideas and share knowledge with their colleagues. Ultimately, this practice will help to develop KS culture among them (Poonkothai, 2016). From these efforts, librarians can not only get benefits for their work and provide better services to their users, they can also play a demanding role in the training of the HEIs staff in developing skills that are perceived to be related to KM, such as information literacy, IT skills and information services use (Raja et al., 2009).

Several factors categorized as an individual, organizational and technological factors were identified that impact KM practices of the South Asian HEIs (Table 3). These factors can be minimized by devising strategies and promoting KS through cooperation, coordination and collaboration among the key players (Rowley, 2000; Toro and Joshi, 2013), as well as through the support of the concerned government regulatory organizations in the respective country (Iqbal, 2015; Mikulecký and Lodhi, 2009).

In HEIs, faculty and administrators are two key actors having different cultural and professional orientations (Favero, 2002). They play a central role in achieving the mission of education, research advancement and public service through regular communication and interaction with each other (Conway, 1998; Kuo, 2009). Through cooperation, coordination and collaboration, they can also contribute jointly in promoting KS culture within the HEIs. There are much-qualified staff working in administrative and supporting roles who can assist in teaching and learning processes if they are provided with an opportunity to collaborate on course delivery and research. Likewise, academics can contribute to the efficient functioning of the HEIs if they are consulted and engaged by the management (Corcoran and Duane, 2017). KS during communication and collaboration between faculty and administrative staff is considered necessary for comprehending institutional policies and developing positive inter-professional working behaviour, and helping them in solving a work-related problem (Rahman et al., 2015; Seyd, 2000).

However, the findings of the review revealed that researchers in the South Asian region addressed KM and KS practices among the homogenous group, faculty, librarian or administrative staff, of the HEIs. They did not explore the issues associated with sharing knowledge between the heterogeneous groups in the HEIs. Research in the context of examining KS between heterogeneous groups within and across individuals or organizations proposed the use of artefacts known as boundary objects. These artefacts enable people to learn from each other, and to act as agents in co-generating, bridging and disrupting understandings (Hawkins et al., 2017). Boundary objects enhance communication among groups and help them to access knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible. The boundary objects are considered to be connectors between different groups and within communities and allow them to improve their practices by sharing knowledge (Fong et al., 2007; Huang and Huang, 2009; Huvila et al., 2017; Impedovo and Manuti, 2016).

Development of conceptual framework

The findings and discussion section of this study depict that KM practices are gaining importance in the HEIs. The research’s findings also supported that successful implementation of KM and KS brings numerous benefits to individuals and institutions in the form of improved academic, research and administrative services. Individual learning leads to organizational learning and benefits the HEI in obtaining improved performance and competitive advantage in the knowledge-based economy. The findings also established that individual, organization and technological factors as well as government policies influence KM practices in the HEIs.

Building on the synthesis of the study’s findings and discussion above, this study developed a conceptual framework consisting of five dimensions: (1) key players, faculty, administrative staff and librarians (2) pre-requisites, (3) boundary objects, (4) the government policies on the HEIs, and (5) outcomes (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Conceptual framework for KS.

In the framework, pre-requisites, the role of HE regulatory authority and outcomes of KM initiatives are included on the basis of findings and discussion of this research. Pre-requisites are grouped as individual, organizational and technological factors (Table 3). Although the pre-requisites and outcomes are well discussed in KM literature, their impact has not been explored through the lens of boundary objects in the extant literature from the HEIs perspective.

The proposed framework guides KS practices from the perspective of mediating artefacts among the key actors of HEIs from the South Asian perspective (Figure 4) and anticipates gains in performance, competitiveness and effectiveness in work routine. This framework is helpful to comprehend how a university administration can address individual, organizational and technological factors for promoting KS culture among the key players of the institution. Moreover, the identification of boundary objects and their role in KS among heterogeneous groups will be helpful for the institutions in supporting and strengthening the objects to promote KS in the institution. Since the HEIs of the region are working under their respective government regulatory bodies, before taking any KM initiative at an institutional level, the regulatory authorities should be taken on board for formulating relevant policies. Thus, the framework can work in a better way if support from the concerned HE regulatory organizations is provided.

This study offers practical and theoretical implications in KM literature. Practically, this framework will be helpful in understanding KS practice through the lens of application of boundary objects among the key actors of the HEIs of the South Asian region. Theoretically, this framework is a valuable addition in KS literature from the boundary objects perspective.

Conclusions

This study explored KM practices in the HEIs of the South Asia region by adopting the SLR approach. The research findings reveal that there is a clear awareness in academic, institutional and government circles of the importance of KM in HE. KM practices bring numerous benefits to the institution as a whole as well as creating an effective KS culture within HEI. However, it is evident from the numbers of studies found and presented in this study, that scholars conducted limited KM research in the region. From the very interesting and incisive research it was found that it is crucial to integrate all the HE institutional stakeholders (academic faculty, administrative staff and LIS experts) into the effort of KM, not just the academic librarians. Various enabling factors were identified impacting on effective KM practice. These factors were categorized into three types: (1) individual, (2) organizational and (3) technological. A synthesis of the study’s findings resulted in a conceptual framework built on the gaps identified in KS research in the region. This conceptual framework provided a general understanding of KS among the prominent groups of the HEIs and proposed to integrate boundary objects, which enable them to share their knowledge. This framework is also expected to provide directions and focus on future KM research.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Saima Kanwal

Miguel Baptista Nunes

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