Factors Contributing to Knowledge Integration

In contributing to the vision heading towards becoming industrialized and developed nation, most of the Malaysian organizations have played their role in the transition process from information age to knowledge age, from the era of industrial economy to the era of economy based on knowledge. Central during this transition period is the knowledge contribution of knowledge workers who are the valuable assets to the organizations and thus protecting and preserving knowledge of the knowledge workers is very crucial and need urgent attention. This is possible through knowledge integration by integrating information into knowledge base. This research examines the factors contributing to knowledge integration by looking at the influence of the content of knowledge work on knowledge work performance,and influence of knowledge workers’ characteristics and organizational characteristics on knowledge integration capacity. Knowledge work performance and knowledge integration capacity are then tested as the mediating factors. The key test in this research is the test regarding moderating factors for the three types of specific knowledge (context-specific, technology-specific, and context-and-technology-specific)to moderate the relationship between the content of knowledge work and knowledge work performance among knowledge workers. Capitalizing on quantitative approach, data from 471 knowledge workers is collected from March 2011 to May 2011.The collected data is tested and proven to support the research framework where all components have positive significant relationship. On the test regarding the moderating effect to the relationship in the model, it is found the general knowledge moderate the relationship between the content of knowledge work and knowledge work performance. Nevertheless,the tests on each component reveal otherwise. This shows that in the case of Malaysian knowledge workers the specific knowledge has to be considered together, not separately, to realize the moderating effect on the relationship between the content of knowledge work and knowledge work performance.