Utilisation of intranet in South African organisations as a knowledge management tool

Abstract

Purpose – To investigate the utilisation of intranet as a knowledge management (KM) tool in South African organisations Findings – The intranet is under utilised in many South African organisations, only 25 percent of the organisations represented in the survey has indicated to have been using the intranet as a tool to facilitate knowledge management. Most respondents indicated that emails and meetings were most effectively utilised as knowledge management tools in their respective organisations. The study also reveals that the content on the intranet is mainly focused on policies, employee contacts and communication bulletins. Employees do not contribute directly to the intranet content, hence the content on the intranet is mainly generic in nature; Information Technology (IT) teams, management and Human Resource (HR) teams are the main contributors of the intranet content. Research limitations/implications – Further research is needed to compare and deduce the benefits of utilising the intranet as a knowledge management tool with regard to business performance indexes such as, competitive advantage, market share, profits, long term growth, bottom line, sales, turnover, cost savings, etc.