A survey of Critical Success Factors for Strategic Knowledge Management implementation: applications for Service Sector

Organizations are implementing knowledge management (KM) systems with the assumption that the result will be an increase in organizational effectiveness, efficiency, and competitiveness. Practices of knowledge management are context-specific and they can influence organizational effectiveness. In the e-economy era, for achieve and sustain the competitive advantage, the implementation of strategic knowledge management (SKM) is undeniable. Through knowledge driven reconfiguration, integration and innovation of organizational competencies, are gained. The main purpose of this research is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) that are very important for SKM implementation. For this purpose data was gathered from services sector of Iran and with focus on the biggest part of this services sector that is banking industry. Data was gathered from both academicians and professionals of the field. After appropriate literature review and also data that gathered from the research population through a question, data was analysed and eventually the more important critical success factors for SKM implementation in this sector was identified and presented. Also the structural equation modelling has been run to demonstrate the validity of basic CSFs in this research. In the final section of this paper the both applied and theoretical recommendations will be presented. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.