Comparison of the adoption of knowledge management systems among the employees of a Turkish municipality

Abstract

The public-administration sector provides rich information to public servants. Therefore the importance of the improved management of knowledge through the use of Knowledge Management Systems has enormously increased in order to solve employees’ tasks and deliver services to citizens effectively while facilitating decision-making capabilities. Furthermore, an organization’s wide adoption of Knowledge Management becomes important in order to obtain higher benefits. This study aims to descriptively identify the difference between the back-office and front-office employees’ adoption of a socio-technical knowledge management system in a municipality setting. Adoption process is comprehensively considered by including its antecedents and consequences. Subsequently the developed seven-point Likert scale survey was conducted in a Turkish municipality and the responses were evaluated descriptively. The results showed that decision environment and decision tasks are quite simple for both groups, although they are more complex for front-office staff than for the back-office staff. However, front-office staff are observed to use the system less than back-office staff and consequently achieve less benefit. Finally, the paper was concluded with further implications for research and practice.