The Strategic Alignment between Knowledge Management and Information Systems Strategy: The Impact of Contextual and Cultural Factors

Abstract

A knowledge asset has been increasingly recognised as the most valuable asset in organisations as it playing an enabling role in formulating a successful strategies and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. However, to continuously capture, maintain and reuse the key information, and arbitrates the strategic knowledge assets, KM should be aligned with business process, organisations and IT. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to investigate the direct effect of the contextual factors such as IT infrastructure and skills, existence of CKO and knowledge sharing on the KM strategic alignment between KM and IS strategy (KMSA-IS) in the banking sector at Arabian Gulf countries. However, cultural factors such as openness to change, organisational structure and trust were examined to have indirect effect on KMSA-IS via the knowledge sharing. In addition, the impact of KMSA-IS on the organisational performance was examined. The results revealed that the contextual factors such as IT infrastructure and skills and existence of CKO as well as the knowledge sharing have shown a significant contribution on KMSA-IS. Organisational structure and trust however, revealed to have indirect impact on KMSA-IS via the knowledge sharing. Therefore, executive managers in the Arabian Gulf banking sectors should adopt new rules using flexible organisational culture, reforming and redesigning their organisational structure and incorporating an advanced IT in their operations for competitive advantage. Moreover, they need to establish an alignment between KM and IS strategy in order to move their KM systems in a direction that holds promise for long-lasting competitive advantage.