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Study of Professional Medical Personnel's Awareness & Attitude of Knowledge Management

In an information era of new knowledge-based economy, how should the traditional medical industry respond? Do medical professionals have any awareness of knowledge management? If yes, what is their attitude towards knowledge? What are the features? Based on the infusion methodology of knowledge management, if a hospital seeks to adopt an information system for knowledge management (KM), the hospital will have to go through the process of integrating the strategy, the process, the information technology and the awareness of the people and the organization. Subjects of this study were medical professionals, and Arthur Andersen¡¦s knowledge management model was taken as reference. The structure of the study is divided into two sections, i.e. ¡§employees¡¦ awareness of knowledge management¡¨ and ¡§employees¡¦ awareness of the hospital¡¦s knowledge management¡¨.
In the former section, factor analysis reveals that medical professionals tend to view knowledge management as the planning and integration of personal knowledge management. Medical professionals recognize that knowledge is an important personal asset, and some inexpressible tacit knowledge still exists in one¡¦s knowledge that needs to be valued. Furthermore, they also believe that in order to increase the value of knowledge assets, it is necessary to share knowledge. In the latter section, factor analysis reveals that medical professionals recognize that a hospital should have a properly planned process to gain knowledge and should create an innovative and practical environment to accumulate knowledge-based assets for the hospital.
As for personal property, in the section of ¡§employees¡¦ awareness of knowledge management¡¨, the study manifests obvious difference on the variables of personal property which includes scale of hospital, age, gender, working years, educational background, type of work and management post. On the other hand, the study shows that in the section of ¡§employees¡¦ awareness of the hospitals¡¦ knowledge management¡¨, there is obvious difference on the variables of personal property including scale of hospital, age, working year, educational background while the property of the gender, type of work and management post remain relatively the same.
Moreover, the study also shows that if employees are more satisfied with the self-awareness of knowledge management, they are more likely to agree with every dimensions of the knowledge management of the hospital they work in. On the other hand, if all dimensions of the hospital¡¦s knowledge management are recognized by the employees, the variable of the self-awareness of knowledge management reflected on the employees will also be positive. This demonstrates that the demand of employee¡¦s personal awareness will be influenced by the working environment, and vice versa. Outstanding employees will affect the operation performance of the hospital. Similarly, a properly managed hospital will enhance the performance of the employees. It is apparent that the two are related to each other from the feature analysis of the study. Thus, if the hospital can invest in improving the structure of the knowledge assets of the hospital and enhance education and propagation, any improvement of the ability of knowledge management of either employers or employees will definitely benefit the other party.
In regards to the four elements including the promotion of knowledge management, high-level leadership enterprise culture, information technology and measurement indicators, the canonical correlation analysis and the regression analysis show that the four elements have been highly approved by the medical professionals. In terms of high-level leadership, the establishment of the Chief Knowledge Office (CKO) has been applauded by the employees. At the meantime, the employees¡¦ ability of using computers and the willingness of sharing information have been greatly influenced by the culture of the enterprise. As for information technology, the information reveals the close relationship between the employees¡¦ ability of using computer and the result of the hospital performance of using the information technology. For measurement indicators, in order to make medical professionals recognize the introduction of knowledge management, performance evaluation of all phases of the introduction of knowledge management should be properly conducted. It is recommended by the study to adopt the theory of the balanced scorecard to be the measurement indicators for evaluation the practical performance of the three components of knowledge assets because the framework of both theories are quite similar.
Furthermore, the study reveals that employees who have worked longer and who are older will be more likely to recogize the management of knowledge self-supervision and are more willing to share their knowledge. Apparently, when a hospital tries to introduce knowledge management to the employees, it will be more efficient and more effective if the hospital can make full use of the participation of senior employees.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0719101-223108
Date19 July 2001
CreatorsHuang, Yih-Sheng
ContributorsLiang-Jyh Huang, Bih-shiaw Jaw, Shyh-Jer Chern
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0719101-223108
Rightswithheld, Copyright information available at source archive

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