Knowledge Management in the Chinese Private Sector

Chinese firms are increasingly paying attention to the knowledge resources of their employees – and are seeking to leverage those resourses for the greater good of the firm. Based on prior research undertaken by ourselves and others, we aim firstly to develop and test a theoretical model that explains the salient factors determining successful Knowledge Management (KM) practice in Chinese firms. This will involve survey-based data collection and statistical analysis. We have already identified four firms in two different industries (Public Relations and IT Services Offshoring) that are interested in participating in the research. We will follow the theoretical validation with a case-based, action-oriented intervention, working with the same firms so as to improve their KM practices. We will thus discover how specific KM practices influence key dimensions of organisational performance such as financial profits, customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, personal productivity and employee satisfaction. We expect that this two-pronged approach will generate knowledge of significant value to both KM researchers and organisations. The proposed research extends prior work undertaken by the PI and CIs.