Organizational IT Competency, Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Sharing

IT competency plays a vital role in knowledge management processes. Information technology affects an organization's ability to store and recall knowledge that has been made explicit through codification, including different forms such as written documents, reports, presentations, patents, formulas, etc. This study aims to measure the influence of a company's IT competency dimensions such as IT-knowledge, IT-operations, and IT-infrastructure on knowledge sharing. For this purpose, a survey of 910 Polish employees with different roles and experiences and across different industries has been conducted. The data were analyzed with a structural equation modeling method (SEM). Findings suggest that infrastructure is not a significant IT competency when it comes to knowledge sharing, whereas IT-knowledge and IT-operations are. It means that infrastructure should be perceived as a necessary but not sufficient factor to ensure the knowledge-sharing flow in organizations. This conclusion leads to the interesting implication that IT-operations and IT-knowledge are actually the vital factors to support effective knowledge sharing. It means that business case knowledge, which is pivotal for effective operations is fundamental for developing IT competency. It means that knowledge workers who act as "bridges" between IT and business operations became more and more valuable human capital assets.