A Systematic Literature Review of Knowledge Sharing Practices in Academic Institutions

Abstract

Many knowledge-sharing activities take place in educational institutions, both formally and informally. If this activity is organized with good knowledge management, then this will support a faster knowledge sharing process to get quality and innovative ideas. This paper aims to obtain a summary of existing research, issues, and opportunities for further analysis on knowledge-sharing (KS) practices in academic institutions. The phases of the systematic literature review (SLR) method are described based on Kitchenham (2009) guideline. We found 21 articles, seven articles from IEEE, nine articles from Science Direct, and five articles from Springer. The collection of research data on knowledge sharing has been carried out in the United States, Australia, China, Cyprus, United Kingdom, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jordanian, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, with the most research locations being Malaysia (14%) and Saudi Arabia (19%). We also attempted to identify the research topic trend of knowledge sharing research in academic institutions. We found two types of research trends of knowledge sharing research in university, including factor analysis and architecture development. Of the two categories of research trends, 76% discussed factor analysis, and 24% discussed architectural development. We also identified six methods in KS research including Partial Least Square Structure Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), questionnaire, data triangulation, focus groups discussion, observation and interview. Moreover, the most used method in related research is questionnaire, because it is a relatively inexpensive, fast and efficient way of collecting large amounts of information.