Knowledge management practices in university administration : the case of the University of Zambia

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY : The thesis set out to establish the nature and level of knowledge management practices inthe administration of the University of Zambia (UNZA) in order to learn more about the state of knowledge management in higher education. To this end a previously validated knowledge management assessment tool developed by Botha and Fouché (2002) wasadapted for use in the higher education context. The case study of UNZA used a mixed methods approach in which data was collected by means of a questionnaire based on the knowledge management assessment tool that was sent to a selection of administrative and management staff based on simple random sampling. At the same time, open-ended questions were asked of respondents in interviews for which a purposive sampling approach was used to select the interviewees. Out of apopulation of 132 management and administrative staff, a sample of 99 was surveyed and 9 senior managers were purposively sampled for interviews. The response rate for the survey was 75.76%, whilst the response rate for interviews was 90%. Empirical data was collectedfrom November 2016 to March 2017.The findings indicate that UNZA established some knowledge management enablers and there were active knowledge management practices. It is demonstrated that UNZA implicitly applied knowledge management principles and have started initiatives and established practices that can be identified as knowledge management related. However, UNZA did not institute knowledge management formally and deliberatively. For this reason, the identified knowledge management practices are not particularly well coordinated and are hard toimprove on actively. In view of these findings, the study concludes with benchmarking guidelines for knowledge management implementations in university administrations. In addition, the study proposes further research on developing knowledge management strategies and implementation framework for the strategies.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University