A Study on Effectiveness and Reasons of using Knowledge Management Practices Mohanavel S* *Professor & Head, Department of Management Studies, Dr. N.G.P. Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India Online published on 3 May, 2016. Abstract Organisations harness knowledge and use it for their business success, thereby allowing the accelerated production of economic value. KM enables the industry today to face challenges of the modern business world with various innovative solutions in terms of products and services. As a result, organisations are at varying stages of planning and implementing knowledge-based strategies. A study was undertaken to know the effectiveness and reasons of using knowledge management (KM) practices used in companies and the relationship between them. The study is descriptive in nature. Convenience sampling technique under non-probability sampling design was used to select the samples. Primary data were collected from the samples by administering a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of three sections namely Company Profile, Effectiveness and Reasons. The data were collected from 89 small to medium KM practicing companies. These included mostly from software, manufacturing, textiles and automotive sectors. Weighted average analysis, correlation analysis, Chi square test, independent sample t-test and ANOVA were carried out on the collected data to derive the findings. Software companies used KM practices to improve sharing or transferring of knowledge with partners. Textile companies and automotive companies used KM practices to refer past data patterns for future decision making. Since the software development process is entirely different from other processes, the reasons and effectiveness of using KM practices in software companies majorly differed from that of other companies, due to differences in sophisticated IT use and cultural and social contexts. The companies have taken steps to incorporate KM concepts and succeeded. Reasons of software companies for using KM practices were strong. But the textile companies required an infrastructure to support knowledge workers and information flow that enables knowledge dissemination. It was observed that KM initiatives are getting well positioned in Indian firms. Present research has identified a culture of knowledge as organisational antecedents to effective KM. The acquired results would help managers to facilitate adoption of KM and prioritise its practices. Top |