Knowledge Sharing Culture: A Study on the Omani Commercial Banking Sector

Abstract

The banking sector is one that is characterized by the high need of management experience and agility to cope with the fast-paced competition raised by the international alliances in this business. The Omani banking sector in general is one of the infrastructure businesses that has essential role in the realization of the Omani Renaissance. This sector has achieved remarkable improvements in terms of the cutting edge technology it has adopted. To reach the Omani aspiration in its economic renaissance, various soft issues beyond technology are to be tuned well to reach of the required competitiveness. Softer issues such as knowledge management are one of the critical soft issues that forms the aim of the study presented, and in particular, to explore how organizational knowledge is shared and nurtured in the sector. Questionnairebased survey and semi-structured interviews were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from over 300 hundred banking employees from five different banks. Clustered sampling was used for the survey and interviews were selective; targeting senior administrator in the sector. The qualitative data was analyzed using SPSS descriptive statistics and thematic analysis was used for analyzing the qualitative data. The study found that the sector has built a competitive cutting edge banking technology over relatively short span of time; however there is still vast room for improvement at the administrative side of the work. Among the recommendations, is having a conscious systematic effort by the sector administration to build physical and virtual facilities for exchanging knowledge among its employees and to provide work stability and an effective reward system for knowledge sharing behavior.