A Study on Impact of Knowledge Management Practices on Organizational Performance in Health Care Sector

Healthcare has emerged as one of the most progressive and largest service sectors in recent times. But India's healthcare infrastructure has not kept pace with the economy's growth. Thus it becomes imperative that good management strategies such as Knowledge management are leveraged to make optimal utilization of resources and improved healthcare delivery especially in a developing country like India. There is a significant body of evidence that shows that experts such as Dwivedi et al. (2005) are now keen to embrace knowledge management tools and techniques to bring about the necessary change required for improved healthcare services. This paper attempts to study the various knowledge management practices, if any followed at GMC, Thanjavur and to explore their impact on learning and performance. Around 100 doctors were administered a five point Likert scale questionnaire which contains questions on knowledge sharing practices, learning and performance. The doctors were randomly chosen and 97 responses were received. The responses were statistically analyzed using SPSS software. The results showed that although Knowledge Management is not officially implemented in the hospital of Jammu, there are many practices which can be qualified as KM practices that are being followed by the medical professionals. These knowledge sharing practices received a mean response of 2.77, while the idea that Knowledge Management will lead to improved Organizational Learning received 3.28 and doctors agreed that this will better the performance received the response of 3.45. Moreover, the results show that Performance is a function of knowledge management and organizational learning (using regression analysis) and there is a significant positive relationship between Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning. The basic limitation faced in the study was the lack of general understanding regarding knowledge management amongst other staff such as Nurses and paramedical personnel and hence the questionnaire could not be administered to these groups.