The Readiness of the University Hospital Employees for the Knowledge-based Management

대학병원 근로자의 지식경영 준비도에 관한 연구

This study purports to investigate the readiness of the university hospital employees in the knowledge-based management. Data were collected from 550 employees including administrative, nursing, and technical staff of 9 university hospitals located in Seoul and Kyunggi Province through the self-administered questionnaires. The response rate was 79% and 425 questionnaires were used as final data and analyzed using 2 test, t-test, and ANOVA. The main findings of the study are as follows. 1) It seems that most employees of the study hospitals have basic knowledge on the concept of knowledge-based management. This finding implies that the implementation of the knowledge-based management in Korean university hospitals will not likely to face strong resistance from their employees. 2) The results show that Korean hospital employees are still not so accustomed to using e-mail as the main communication tool. This finding suggests that it is necessary to use various communication tools which include electronic data interchange, teleconference, and cyber chatting for facilitating the knowledge-based management in Korean university hospitals. 3) It is desirable to appoint a chief knowledge officer(CKO) for operating knowledge-based management system effectively. 4) A reward system for employees who show a distinguished performance in the creation and sharing of new knowledge should be established. Knowledge mileage system, selection of the best knowledge employee and team will be a good example of the effective reward system. 5) The participation and support from the chief executive officers (CEO) of the hospitals is an important factor for successful knowledge-based management. Furthermore, to make physicians actively participate in the knowledge-based management is another important factor for obtaining valuable outputs from the system. 6) It is found that the knowledge and skills of the hospitals employees on the information technology (IT) are not sufficient for making knowledge-based management more popular. This implies that it is very important to select IT-oriented employees and educate them continuously on the knowledge-based management.