Knowledge management in Indian higher educational institutes for developing as a learning organization- An exploratory study

Dynamic business environment has shifted the focus of organizations from being traditional to learning one. Business environment is too conglomerate to form immotile strategies, therefore organizations must have the ability to learn, adapt, and change. Complexity theory states that organizations need to adapt to either the complex or adaptive structure owing to the uncertainty in the environment. It is tantamount to educational sector as well. Educational institutes are proliferating at a rapid pace. Intense competition is coming to education institutes as well. Every educational institute aims to benchmark its practices with those of already existing as world-class institutes like IIT's, IIM's, and NIT's. Thus, in a fast pace environment, importance of knowledge and learning workers have been increasing rapidly. Organizations develop new insights through its effective knowledge management practices thereby promoting continuous learning. This paper attempts to study the relationship between knowledge management and learning organization in a way that knowledge management leads to continuous learning. The paper also aims to formulate the items of knowledge management for the survey. Based on an extensive literature review and expert judgment, 300 faculty members have been taken as respondents for this exploratory study. The result obtained is an extraction of 4 factors of 21 items of knowledge management. With this survey, knowledge management as one of the antecedents of learning organization in Indian higher education has been introduced. Discussions and conclusions are drawn in the context of the present literature. The paper also discusses the implications for academicians and researchers.