Investigation into poor knowledge management practice in FlightCentre

SOUTHERN CROSS UNIVERSITY
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Student Name: Ritesh Kumar Asre
Student ID No.: 22883623
Unit Name: Industry Research Project: Part B
Unit Code: MNG93218
Tutor’s name: Suman Sen
Assignment No.: 3
Assignment Title: Research Report
Due date: 14 October 2019
Date submitted: 13 October 2019
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Ritesh Kumar Asre
Date: 13 October 2019

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND TOURISM
RESEARCH REPORT
INVESTIGATION INTO POOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN FLIGHTCENTRE
BY
RITESH KUMAR ASRE
Program: Masters of Information Technology Management
September 2019
The author, Ritesh Kumar Asre, owns copyright and the confidential information contained in this
document. No part of this document may be reproduced or disclosed to any person or organization
without author’s prior written consent

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Knowledge management has proven to be of great significance in the current business environment
where most businesses are becoming multinational. This critical aspect is building a theoretical
foundation from people and processes within organizations, organizational structure, organizational
culture, and organizational performance among others besides the significance of the knowledge
management. Poor knowledge management may lead to a significant corporate risk. This paper has
examined the causes of poor knowledge management at Flight center organization.
The Flight Center Company has been facing various challenges resulting from poor knowledge
management within the organization. The organization clients have been raising complains about
incorrect provision of information, failure of providing timely and accurate follow up information
about travel destination among others. This is a burning issue within the organization; an organization
like Flight center should take much more proactive role in its operations and this cannot be achieved
without an effective knowledge management strategy in place. Following this problem, the main aim of
the research is to identify the causes of the knowledge management practices within the Flight Center
organization.
Various theoretical frameworks and literature related to the subject of the study were also examined for
this study. The study will be majorly based on quantitative analysis as it also employs some qualitative
study to further support the findings. The mixed method enables generalization as well as usefulness of
the results collected from the study. The sample used for this research is Flight Center Travel Group
organization. The survey was conducted with the aid of questionnaires which were distributed to the
organization personnel through Google forms. The questions used in the survey were based on 5-point
scale, a psychometric scale that is common with many researches. On the other hand, the qualitative
data were retrieved from online libraries using various keywords. The research was conducted taking
ethical concerns into account.
The results of the study found various causes of poor knowledge management. It has been found that
ineffective knowledge sharing is one of the major causes of poor knowledge management.
Additionally, lack of rewards for knowledge sharing is also another factor that leads to poor knowledge
management within the organization. Moreover, proper technologies for knowledge management have
been found to cause poor knowledge management. Organization structure and culture have also been
found to be other causes of knowledge management.
KEYWORDS: knowledge management, poor knowledge management, causes of poor knowledge
management, impacts of poor knowledge management

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.....................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH PROBLEM......................................................................................5
Introduction..................................................................................................................................5
Industry Partner............................................................................................................................5
Research Problem........................................................................................................................5
Significance of the Problem.........................................................................................................6
Research Aim...............................................................................................................................6
Research Questions......................................................................................................................6
Structure of the Report.................................................................................................................7
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW...............................................................8
Theoretical Background...............................................................................................................8
Literature Review.........................................................................................................................8
Factors Investigated...................................................................................................................11
METHODOLOGY..............................................................................................................................12
Research Design.........................................................................................................................12
Research Tool............................................................................................................................12
Ethical Concerns........................................................................................................................13
FINDINGS........................................................................................................................................14
Demographic frequency of participants.....................................................................................14
People and Process.....................................................................................................................14
Organizational Structure............................................................................................................15
Technology.................................................................................................................................16
Organizational Culture...............................................................................................................17
Poor Knowledge Management Practices...................................................................................19
DISCUSSION................................................................................................................................20
RECOMMENDATION.................................................................................................................21
LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSION.........................................................................................23
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................24

INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH PROBLEM
Introduction
It is undeniable that we live in a globalized world that is associated with the fast transfer of information
across a wide geographical area with the aid of the internet technology. The knowledge based economy
where significance is placed on effective management of the human capital for organizations to ensure
that they provide their customers with the best services possible has emerged as the consequence of the
globalization. Businesses does not solely compete based on strength and financial capital but they also
compete in knowledge management. Nowadays, knowledge management has become the new
competitive advantage in the business industry (Groff and Jones, 2012, pp.32-49).Moreover, the
current knowledge economy demands that good practices of the knowledge management be put in
place so as to enhance the performance of the organization. One popular saying goes that knowledge is
power. According to this statement, it can be noted that knowledge management is a factor of
fundamental relevance in the current business environment. Besides the significance of the knowledge
management, organizations are confronted with problems concerning the knowledge management
(Maier and Hadrich, 2011, pp. 779-790; (Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal, 2014, pp.74). Issues in
knowledge management have shown to be the most corporate risks nowadays.
Industry Partner
The industry partner chosen for this research was FlightCentre Travel Group (FCTG). FCTG is one of
the largest travel agencies in the world and its headquarters is based in Southbank, Brisbane, Australia.
It has operations in 23 countries and has corporate travel management network in more than 90
countries.
FlightCentre has about 2800 shops under various retail and corporate brands (FCTG 2018) and it
employs approximately 19,000 employees globally, 3000 of which are based within Brisbane, Australia
area. Most of the operations are decentralized due to the geographical barriers and time-zones, thus
every market region such as New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, Singapore, South
Africa etc manage their own marketing, financial, sales, Information technology functionalities which
may or may not be similar in nature.
FlightCentre or FC brand is the largest of the Leisure brand under FCTG. This research paper focused
on the knowledge management problems that are associated with the FlightCentre brand within the
Brisbane and Greater Brisbane areas.
Research Problem
FCTG has been facing challenges concerning knowledge management which is the real problem that
this research seeks to identify.
The problem to be investigated by this research is about poor knowledge of travel destinations by
consultants within FlightCentre brand. This problem has been realized with increase in number of
customer complaints and decrease in customer retention numbers within Flight Centre brand.
The nature of the complaints occurs during pre-travel, in-travel and post-travel. These complaints are
result of incorrect information provided in quotes, failure to provide timely and accurate follow-up
information after quotes are generated, incorrect destination information, lack of understanding of the
products and packages, lack of understanding of customer needs, varying outcome of similar products
and service across different shops and dissatisfied customers with the overall service provided by the
FlightCentre staff.

Based on this problem, it was highlighted that FlightCentre needs to have efficient Knowledge
Management systems or discipline in place to address the issue of customer complaints regarding travel
destination knowledge by reducing the number of complaints and improving overall customer service
Significance of the Problem
Knowledge Management problem is a big issue within the Flight Center organization. This is in the
sense that a business oriented approach to the organization management together with a more
commercial driven organization encourages the airline corporate to take much more proactive role in its
operation. The organization, being an international corporate, collects a huge amount of information
from its customers. This information and the actual data are essential for the corporate to develop new
strategies and come up with a new marketing plan that is essential for the business to prosper. For the
organization to achieve this, an explicit and tacit available knowledge needs to be provided and
analyzed for the organization to have a clear understanding of what they have as well as what they
need, which would not be attained if the organization have inefficient knowledge management (López-
Nicolás and Meroño-Cerdán, 2011, pp.502-509; Koenig, 2012, pp.64).
Additionally, the poor knowledge management may undermine the Flight Center strategies which
would increase the risks including threatening the ability of the organization to achieve growth,
providing an advantage to the competitors of the organization, decreasing the innovation capacity of
the organization as well as increasing vulnerabilities within the corporate among others (Wang and
Wang, 2012, pp.8899-8908).
The impacts can be summarized as the reduction of the specialized knowledge, competitive position
and the unique experience as well as the increase in the risks concerning the loss of the organization
customers, thus making this a problem worth investigating.
This research is important and will not only help Flight Center corporate but will also be essential in
the industry at large. The research seek to explore various factors affecting knowledge management in
the flight center organization and provide recommendation thus enhancing profitability of a business
(Anand and Singh, 2011, pp.926-939). This research will help to:
 Identify causes or poor knowledge management (Pre-Travel, During Travel, Post Travel)
 Reduce the number of customer complaints
 Improve customer retention through better knowledge management practices
Airline agencies should be taken as real enterprises with the goal of being long term profit generators
that can both reward its personnel as it sustain independent development of the organization.
Research Aim
This research aimed to identify the causes of poor knowledge management practices within
FlightCentre band based on the quantitative analysis of the data collected from the organization
employees.
Research Questions
This research seeks to provide solutions to the following questions.
a) What are the factors causing poor knowledge management in Flight Centre brand?
This question is of fundamental relevance in solving the knowledge management featuring in the
organization. It is so because in order to find the relevant solution to the problem at hand, we have
to identify the problem as well as its cause.
b) What needs to be done to improve poor knowledge management practices in Flight Centre
brand?