Identification of the Constraints and Obstacles to the Creation and Sharing of Knowledge

In today's dynamic environment, knowledge sharing among employees has become a key component of gaining competitive advantage for organizations. Given this, the identification of the effective constraints on knowledge sharing has also become very important. These constraints are composed of factors that prevent proper knowledge sharing. This research is intended to identify and classify the limitations of knowledge creation and sharing, and to investigate the impact of these limitations on knowledge sharing in organizations. The research consists of two stages: in the first stage, the limitations of knowledge creation and sharing are identified through the content analysis of the knowledge management literature. In the second part, applying a questionnaire, the data are collected. Using the analysis of variance and Kruskal-Wallis test, the researchers investigated the effects of these constraints on knowledge creation and sharing. Due to the limitations of total population sampling, the statistical population of this study included all 40 managers and employees of Keshavarzi Bank of Nahavand. The findings revealed that that there are eight constraints on knowledge creation and sharing, including inherited systems, difficult relationship, distance, costs of knowledge, knowledge application strategy, available technology, and uncertainty and distrust. The findings also indicated that the impact of strategy constraints on knowledge application, distance, uncertainty and distrust vary along the different supply chain processes.