Knowledge management strategy: an organizational change prospective

Purpose The most critical phase of a change process is change implementation and it is evident that the masterfully originated change process fails due to its poor implementation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to profile how knowledge management (KM) strategies, personalization and codification, are helpful in successful change implementation by reducing employee cynicism and increasing the level of readiness for change. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 196 executives of National Bank of Pakistan at Time 1 (pre-implementation) and Time 2 (post-implementation) with the temporal research design. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the direct effect; Preacher and Hayes (2004) test is applied to measure the mediating effect and guidelines of Aguinis (2004) are followed for analyzing the moderating effect. Findings The result of the direct effect shows that both KM strategies have significant positive effect on successful change implementation. Further, mediation analysis proves that readiness for change partially mediates between KM strategies and successful change implementation. In addition, partial interactive effects of employee cynicism is observed between readiness for change and successful change implementation. Research limitations/implications The management should initiate steps to boost personalization and codification strategies at their optimal levels. This would ultimately be helpful to implement a successful change through developing readiness for change and reducing the employee cynicism regarding change. Originality/value The area of successful change implementation in the context of KM strategies was untapped, and is examined in this study.