A FRAMEWORK FOR INCENTIVES IN KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND SHARING BY ACADEMIC STAFF AT THE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF KENYA

Abstract

ABSTRACT Incentives for knowledge creation and sharing demonstrate an institution’s commitment to knowledge creation and sharing. The existence or absence of incentives can encourage or discourage individuals from contributing towards knowledge creation and sharing. The research aimed to investigate the role of incentives in knowledge creation and sharing by the academic staff at The Technical University of Kenya (TU-K). The secondary objectives of the study were to: investigate academic and administration staff perceptions of knowledge creation and sharing process at TU-K; establish the types of incentives in place for academic staff at TU-K; investigate the extent to which incentives encourage academic staff at TU-K to create and share knowledge and propose an incentives framework for knowledge creation and sharing by academic staff at TUK. The study was guided by both organisational knowledge conversion theory by Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) and social exchange theory by Homan’s (1961). The study employed mixed method design (convergent parallel design) which involves collecting and analysing two independent aspects of quantitative and qualitative data at the same time or in a single phase. The study used stratified random sampling and purposive sampling to come up with a sample size of 314 drawn out of a target population of 627. Data was collected through semi-structured questionnaires and interviews, and analysed using MS excel and discourse analysis and presented in charts and tables. The findings indicated that TU-K did not have a formal incentive framework for their academic staff and there were notable gaps in ways the university encourages knowledge creation and sharing. A Positive effort towards enhancing knowledge creation and sharing is with the establishment of directorate of innovation and knowledge exchange. The study concluded that knowledge creation and sharing is critical process that should be supported and valued by the University through provision of both financial and non-financial incentives. Recommendation include adoption and implementation of an integrated financial and non-financial incentives framework. Implications of this study is that it contributes to different areas within the field of information and knowledge management and combines the fields of incentives and knowledge creation and sharing by developing existing research on social exchange theory and the knowledge organisation theory. Keywords: Knowledge creation, Knowledge sharing, Framework of incentives, Technical University of Kenya.