Halil Zaim

Performance of knowledge management practices: a causal analysis

– The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of knowledge management (KM) infrastructure and KM processes on the performance of KM practices., – The paper is based on personal interviews, data were collected from 83 managers from a single case study of a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operator in Turkey., – The paper finds that hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Test of hypotheses revealed that both KM processes and KM infrastructure positively and significantly influenced the performance of KM practices. These findings tend to corroborate our conceptual model and are also in line with the existing literature. KM infrastructure was found to be more significantly affecting KM performance than KM processes, indicating that the context and background of KM is more important than the application aspects of KM., – The findings in this paper cannot be generalized due to the case study approach. It may not be claimed that both KM processes and KM infrastructure solely determine the performance of KM practices. Instead, there are many other factors that may influence KM performance, which are somewhat beyond the scope of this research., – The paper shows that the evaluation of KM performance is expected to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and adaptability of KM efforts so as to add more value to the overall performance of the organization., – In this paper there is little or no empirical evidence investigating the influence of KM infrastructure and KM processes on KM performance. This paper rectifies this imbalance by clarifying the link between KM infrastructure, processes and performance.

The impact of market orientation on NSD and financial performance of hospital industry

Purpose – The principal aim of this study is to determine the critical factors of market orientation (MO) and to measure its effect on new service development (NSD) and financial performance of hospital industry in Turkey.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on a self‐administered questionnaire, the data were collected from a sample of privately‐held general hospitals within the city of Istanbul in Turkey. Based on theoretical considerations, a model was proposed to examine the interrelationships among MO, NSD‐performance and financial performance.Findings – Data analysis reveals that while MO has a strong and positive effect on NSD‐performance, it has no significant effect on financial performance. Also a strong and positive relationship was noted between NSD‐performance and financial performance. Finally, the findings also provided evidence for the mediating role of NSD‐performance in the relationship between MO and financial performance in the hospital industry.Research limitations/implications – Firs...

A comparative analysis of machine learning systems for measuring the impact of knowledge management practices

Knowledge management (KM) has recently emerged as a discrete area in the study of organizations and frequently cited as an antecedent of organizational performance. This study aims at investigating the impact of KM practices on organizational performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in service industry. Four popular machine learning techniques (i.e., neural networks, support vector machines, decision trees and logistic regression) along with statistical factor analysis (EFA and CFA) are used to developed predictive and explanatory models. The data for this study is obtained from 277 SMEs operating in the service industry within the greater metropolitan area of Istanbul in Turkey. The analyses indicated that there is a strong and positive relationship between the implementation level of KM practices and organizational performance related to KM. The paper summarizes the finding of the study and provides managerial implications to improve the organizational performance of SMEs through effective implementation of KM practices. Highlights? Knowledge management (KM) is an antecedent to organizational performance. ? SMEs need to improve their KM practices to be competitive. ? A survey of 277 SMEs are used in this empirical study. ? Machine learning techniques can be used to identify complex relationships. ? There is a strong relationship between KM practices and organizational performance.

Measuring and evaluating efficiency of hospitals through total quality management: A multi-criteria data envelopment analysis model

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to measure and evaluate the efficiency of 12 hospitals in Turkey using a multi-criteria Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology. Number of beds, number of physicians and the critical factors of total quality management in the health care sector were used as inputs of the model. The outputs used in this analysis incorporated financial and non-financial performance of hospitals, number of outpatients and number of patient days. Performance of the hospitals was measured using subjective measures based on executives perception of how their organization performed relative to the competition. Results provide management with information regarding the relatively best practice hospitals in the observation sets and locate the relatively inefficient hospitals by comparison with the best practice ones. At last some suggestions are made for the least efficient hospital.

The Influence of Knowledge Management on Financial and Non-Financial Performance

The primary aim of this study is to determine critical factors of knowledge management (KM) and to measure their effect on organisational performance. The design of the study is based on a survey composed of questions related to the KM processes. Following refinement and retesting the initial questionnaire development, the final questionnaire was subjected to 83 managers from various ranks based on personal interviews. The variance-based structural equation modelling reveals that there is a strong positive relationship between KM implementation and non-financial performance, while there is no significant influence of KM implementation on financial performance. With only a mediating effect of non-financial performance, the KM implementation has a strong positive impact on financial performance. This study presents uniqueness in that it is the first and foremost one that analyses effects of KM practices on financial performance both directly and indirectly via the mediating effect of non-financial performance factors.

Application of neural networks in talent management

Study of talent management is getting more attentions in the recent years. It was found that there are no easy classification methods for verifying talents. This paper discusses the application of neural networks for a talent matrix based talent classification process. The proposed method is easy to implement, and free from biasing and nepotism.