The impact of knowledge management on team learning: an empirical study in public enterprises

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the impact of knowledge management (KM) practices (knowledge creation, knowledge storage, knowledge transfer and knowledge application) and demographic and occupational factors on team learning (TL) in public enterprises in Jordan.Design/methodology/approachA convenient random sample of 389 employees working in 52 various functional teams in the Jordanian public enterprises completed a self-administrated questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used to analyze the data and test the proposed hypotheses.FindingsThe results of this study showed that KM practices explained an additional 53% of the variance in TL above the 9% variance explained by the demographic and occupational factors (i.e. gender, work experience, age, education, occupational position, team size and participation in training on KM and TL). Notably, in the absence of the effects of KM dimensions, work experience, age, team size and "participation in training on KM and TL" were significant predictors of TL. However, after including the effects of KM dimensions in the regression analysis, only the participation in training variable, along with the KM dimensions, remained significant predictors of TL.Practical implicationsThis study contributes to public enterprise administration by highlighting the importance of KM practices in nurturing a healthy TL climate that can ultimately enhance job performance and organizational success.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is one of the few studies in the Arab world that examines real functional teams to understand the role of KM in enhancing the practice of TL.