Effect Of Knowledge Sharing On Management Development At Kenya Wildlife Service

Abstract

Management development fails to realize its full potential because of various reasons including employees with knowledge either failing to share the knowledge or exiting the organization. The main objective of this study was to establish the effect of knowledge sharing on management development at KWS. Specifically, this study sought to establish the effect of databanks on management development at KWS; determine the effect of organizational manuals and publications on management development at KWS and to examine how communities of practice affect management development at KWS guided by three theories (theory of organizational knowledge, theory of Knowledge Management and the Human Capital Theory. The design adopted for this study was the descriptive survey with a target population of all 411 employees in senior (JG1-4) and middle management levels (JG5-6) at KWS at its headquarters, Air wing, Central Workshop, KWS LEA, WRTI and across the eight administrative conservation areas (Central Rift, Coast, Eastern, Mountain, Northern, Southern, Tsavo and Western). Stratified simple random sampling was applied in selecting 124 (30% of the total population) study subjects. This study used primary data that was collected by a structured questionnaire that was tested beforehand in order to correctly formulate the questions and to remove any ambiguity therein. To test the internal consistency of the instruments in this study, a reliability analysis was performed using the Cronbach Alpha test. The data collected was analyzed using both descriptive statistics (mean scores and stand deviations) and inferential statistics (Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficients and Multiple Coefficients). Findings showed that organizational manuals and publications had a strong and significant positive relationship with management development while databanks and communities of practice had moderate and significant positive relationship with management development. It was clear that changes in management development at the KWS are associated with knowledge sharing initiatives within the organization and that organizational manuals and publications showed the greatest contribution by knowledge sharing on management development followed by communities of practice. Databanks had the weakest contribution to management development at KWS. It was recommended that the organization needs to emphasize on mechanisms for documenting a database system through creation and dissemination of knowledge and that it needs to make the documented manuals and publications readily accessible to staff in the organization for standardization of operations and development of managerial competencies. It further recommended that that future study needs to combine methodologies from both quantitative and qualitative research designs.