Do Rewards Matter for Managing Knowledge through Empowering Knowledge Workers?

Purpose: The purpose of the study revolves around understanding the relationship ofintrinsic and extrinsic rewards associated with knowledge management practices, therelationship is further explored with psychological empowerment as mediator betweenrewards and KM practices.Methodology/Design: The study falls under the category of positivism as deductiveapproach is most suitable. The data was collected using a structured questionnairefrom different colleges of multiple cities of Pakistan. The sample was drawn on basis ofcluster sampling technique. Initially 390 questionnaires were distributed among theteachers, out of which 263 completely filled questionnaires were used for data analysisusing SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) and AMOS.Findings and Implications: Results of this study indicated strong positive impact ofintrinsic rewards and psychological empowerment with knowledge managementpractices while no significant linkage of extrinsic rewards was found with knowledgemanagement. Moreover current study has indicated that intrinsic rewards are ofgreater importance to people than extrinsic rewards. Results suggested that in order toproduce knowledge management culture in organizations particularly knowledgeoriented ones, it is necessary for the supervisors and managers to devise suchenvironment and policies where individuals are given empowerment and rewards ofintrinsic nature so that they are motivated to get involved in knowledge managementpractices which may provide competitive edge to the organization.Limitations: The study has limited generalization due to small sample size. Anotheraspect is cross-sectional nature of the study.