ECM34KM Knowledge Management Report: Muscat Municipality Analysis

This report provides a critical analysis of Knowledge Management practices within the Muscat Municipality in Oman. It begins with a background on the municipality, highlighting its role in public service enhancement and its historical development. The report identifies key issues and challenges, including the impact of electronic information growth, organizational culture, and reluctance to share knowledge among employees. It examines the limitations of existing IT systems, which hinder information sharing and access. The impacts of these challenges include difficulties in research, poor system integration, and lack of clarity in organizational strategies. The report offers recommendations for improvement, such as effective communication strategies for senior management, revisions to the reward system, and the establishment of a knowledge management culture to promote sharing and learning. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding knowledge managers' needs and fostering a culture that values knowledge sharing. References to relevant research are also included.

Knowledge
Management in
Municipality of
Muscat
Sultanate of Oman
NAME OF THE STUDENT:
STUDENT ID:
AUTHOR NOTE:

Company background
 The name of the company is Muscat Municipality in Sultanate of Oman
 It is a public institution that is dedicated towards the enhancement and
improvement of the public services.
 It was developed in the early twenties when administrative organizations
had first started their operations (Baawain et al. 2017).
 It is a part of the developed municipality and different branches of the
municipality as well.
 Its main responsibilities are creating modern road networks and highways
for the beautification of the city and the other important services like
building permits, rent contracts, parking violation, Muscat Municipality
license in the capital city of Oman, Muscat.

Issues and Challenges
 The emergence and rapid growth of the electronic
information has worsened all these problems and issues
over the last two decades.
 The organisational culture within the municipality has
been found to be not supporting the view that a company
must value the knowledge and ideas that the employees
create (AI-Aama 2014).
 The older employees were found to be reluctant for
sharing their knowledge as of the fact that they subscribe
to the idea that knowledge is power.

Continuation..
 Muscat Municipality have Information Technology (IT)
systems in place but it employ different systems in
different departments of the organisation without a
single system that traverse the whole municipality
(Naqvi and Ai-Shhihi 2014)
 Because of shortage of integration in the systems, the
sharing of information is hindered and access to the
information resources is also inadequate.

Impacts
 This is why, the employees find it very difficult to research and do
their work well.
 All these have further led to little integration and coordination
among the information systems, huge number of disparate
information management systems, direct competition among the
information management systems, very limited and very patch
adoption of the prevailing information systems by the
organisational employees
 It have also resulted in lack of clarity over the broader
organisational directions and strategies of Muscat Municipality
and at the same time, have resulted in emergence of difficulties
in the changing work practices and staff processes

Recommendations
 The senior management and managers of the company should be enabled for
communicating effectively with the other people and managing their personal
time and use it in effective manner.
 That the reward system required revising and an effective learning environment
is required to be established for fostering transformational leadership in place.
 The organisational managers must ensure the promotion of acceptance and
assimilation of Knowledge Management in place.
 The knowledge managers of the municipality should explore the demand side
(what the knowledge managers require) before focusing on the side of the supply
(the system that make the knowledge available to the users and the knowledge
and information sharing).
 One of the keys to effective knowledge management is development of a
knowledge management culture that make sure that people are understanding
the value of sharing what they do and that of learning from the others.

References:
 Al-Aama, A.Y., 2014. Technology knowledge management
(TKM) taxonomy: using technology to manage knowledge in a
Saudi municipality. Vine, 44(1), pp.2-21.
 Baawain, M., Al-Mamun, A., Omidvarborna, H. and Al-Amri, W.,
2017. Ultimate composition analysis of municipal solid waste
in Muscat. Journal of cleaner production, 148, pp.355-362.
 Naqvi, S.J. and Al-Shihi, H., 2014. Factors Affecting M-
commerce Adoption in Oman using Technology Acceptance
Modeling Approach. TEM Journal, 3(4), p.315.

Thank You