Leveraging Knowledge Management Practices to Enhance Organizational Learning Capability

As the nature of the new knowledge-driven economy shifts to a greater reliance on knowledge management practices to enhance learning opportunities and maintain competitive advantage, organizations are increasingly turning to effective knowledge management practices as the means to achieve their learning capacities and continue to gain competitive advantage. This paper explores how Knowledge Management Practices (KMP) affect Organizational Learning Capability (OLC) and how Knowledge Sharing (KS) and Absorptive Capacity (AC) serve as mediating variables in this context, in the context of Bangladeshi firms. Based on the re-source-based perspective and absorptive capacity theory, a conceptual model was formulated and empir-ically tested using data gathered on 385 respondents in manufacturing, service and knowledge-based sectors. In the study, the relationships between the constructs are analyzed by implementing Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS. The results suggest that structured knowledge pro-cesses positively and significantly impact organizational learning. Moreover, KMP plays a significant role in advancing internal knowledge sharing and external knowledge acquisi-tion as it has a significant impact on both KS and AC. It is also revealed that both KS and AC have significant positive influence on OLC thus are important drivers of learning ability. It means that the effectiveness of the knowledge management practices is mostly carried over through these means. It is worth noting that the mediating effect of absorptive capacity is stronger, and the need to integrate external knowledge in facilitating organizational learning is therefore important. This research adds value to the existing body of literature in that it presents a concise framework that explains the ef-fects of knowledge management practices on organizational learning via various knowledge pro-cesses. It also builds upon current research as it provides empirical data in a developing country setting. In a practical sense, the implications of the findings are that organizations need to invest in knowledge infrastructure, promote the culture of knowledge-sharing, and enhance the absorptive capacity, to enhance learning outcomes and the overall organizational performance.