This thesis study explores the existing knowledge management and sharing practices in donor organizations, particularly working in the developing countries. The potentional of knowledge management and sharing to facilitate development organizations in carrying out development work has been recognised in the literature. Literature presented mix of critique and appreciation to the existing efforts of donor agencies. Knowledge sharing platforms revolves around the country initiatives and donor agencies like UNDP and World Bank which are proactive in establishing these platforms for partner organizations. This research contributes practical insight to the question of delivery of these platforms, through an empirical investigation based on the development professionals' experiences. As earlier research shows enormous amount of literature on individual, team and organizational level knowledge sharing, this study sets prime focus on community level or external knowledge sharing, an area where there exist a dearth of emperical research or contributing literature on examing the role of sharing initiatives and possible contribution in improving risk management in development projects. Literature shows the potential of knowledge management and sharing practices, as their possible contribution in the global development practices and in bridging gap between North-South stakeholders. However, cultural, technological, organizational and individual level issues escalate with external level of knowledge sharing and thesis rightly, identifies success factors from the literature alongwith their viability from the professionals. It is even more inadequate when it comes to projects of donor organizations in under developed and developing countries. With 80% of documented failure rates of knowledge sharing systems, external knowledge sharing with partner organizations or network organizations is really not adequate and do not have supporting culture. As this whole process of sharing knowledge, heavily relies on the perceived motivation and willingness to share, study has tried to identify the challenges facing wider use of these sharing systems. Study also contributes with suggestions for knowledge management and sharing system developers, policy and decision makers and system users, to improve the overall contribution of knowledge sharing in better risk management. Apart from the cultural barriers, there are technical and policy level issues which need more concerted efforts to improve the use of these sharing systems by various organizations and individuals. / House No. 174-A, St. 61, I-8/3, Islamabad, Pakistan Contact: +92-336-5666065, Email: noman-1985@hotmail.com

This qualitative study is of the interpretivist nature and it aims to examine how knowledge workers perceive their interaction with a knowledge management system when used for knowledge sharing purposes. The purpose is to offer answers to two research questions: How do knowledge workers perceive their interaction with knowledge management technology in relation to knowledge sharing? What are the benefits and challenges that knowledge workers experience in relation to knowledge managing and sharing when using a KMS system? The data was collected by applying qualitative research methods and by conducting five interviews with participants of an IT organization that has its head office in Sweden, but additional offices in other geographical locations. To be able to study the participants´ perception and the benefits of the use on both local and international levels, the interviewees were chosen from different sites in which their organization was operating. To provide the answers to these questions and to establish the foundation of this research, an extensive literature review on the problem area was carried out, and a theoretical framework has been employed to study the different aspects of this model in the context of knowledge management systems in relation to knowledge sharing among knowledge workers. As a result, additional derived attributes came from the findings and it is shown that users tend to relate knowledge quality with the completeness, frequency of update, and validity of the knowledge content that they are exposed to in the KMS. Similarly, they relate KMS quality to administrability and maintenance easiness, whereas organizational service providing quality in relation to knowledge sharing is more related to the aspects of organizational commitment and reliability. Moreover, the findings show that participants relate their intention to use the KMS to the attributes of convenience and practicality, and the levels of user satisfaction were in this case mainly related to the user´s perception of usefulness. Lastly, the perception of the benefits and reciprocal value-creating for both the organization and the individual was examined and the findings show that the users tend to relate these to the aspect of relevance, or in other words that the benefits are only perceived as useful by the user if they are identifiable, respectively the user being aware of the benefits and perceiving them as relevant.