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Challenges in Knowledge Management:

Insights from Oil and Gas Industry
Saif Al Muzahmi

University Utara Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Current study is undertaken to highlight various problems and challenges faced by oil and gas
(O&G) sector while implementing knowledge management system and adopting knowledge
based initiatives. In this qualitative study detailed literature review has been done to dig out the
deep routed problems and challenges faced by O&G sector regarding knowledge management to
solve a serious problem with the identified domain. By taking deep insights of the sector, present
study found that various system, procedure and cultural based problems exist in O&G sector that
hinder the knowledge management to underpin the O&G sector to become knowledge based
sector.
Keywords: Knowledge, Management, Oil , GAS, Knowledge challenge

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge management is becoming a prime necessity for firms to be competitive in

knowledge driven markets. According to Serban& Luan (2002) and Yang & Wan (2004), there
are many successful stories of organizations around the world with true realization of their
investment on the KM.
Lindblom and Tikkanen (2010)statedthat the knowledge management means a list of
strategies used by an organization in “getting the right information to the right person and at the
right time”. It also denotes the process where an organization comprehensively gather,
systematically share and evaluates its knowledge which has been classified as human resources,
documents, and other imperative resources pertinent in achieving organizational objectives and
goals. Knowledge management thus involves gathering, organizing, refining and disseminating
information to the right persons for actionable insights (Alavi & Leidner, 1999).

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According toChong and Besharati (2014), barriers to knowledge building mostly stem out
from the existence of poor organizational culture. Furthermore, barriers to knowledge building
are classified into three categories namely individual (people), organizational, and technological
barriers. In order for KM to be fruitful for the organization, these three barriers should be
integrated in a way they complement each other. None the less, there are numbers of other
barriers and obstacles that every organization needs to address in order to take full advantage of
the KMS.
Take an example of Oil and Gas companies which are operating in knowledge-intensive
area like drilling, geography, and geophysics with most of challenge that affect their access to
highly valued knowledge pools of “one million man-years of experience”. Additionally, there are
some other challenges like: providing performance enhancement in the risky and expensive
offshore mega projects, developing user-populated knowledge bases, reducing capital and
operating overheads, improving utilization and up time, and successful market positioning that
enables firms to compete in global market has becomes a big challenge in O&G Industry (Tucci,
2013). There are also few other challenges in the organizations that, they should learn and bring
up-to-date culture for handling human resource as well as their skills, knowledge and experience
that can be stored in the brains of the people who may work as experts in organizations.
One thing must be kept in minds in order to ensure absolute success of the tenets of
knowledge management that the management of the organization continuously brings a change in
its organizational culture. The incumbent corporate culture does not always support sharing
practices in the organization (Staroňová, 2014). There is a list of complex tasks that Oil and Gas
companies have to deal with, which are considered as knowledge intensive work in the
company(Skalle, Aamodt, & Laumann, 2014). Globalization, outsourcing, new technology, new
partnerships and regulations of the governments have increased the necessity of knowledge
sharing practices for faster and improved work processes (Denicolai, Zucchella, & Strange,
2014).
Many problems have been identified in this field. It is imperative that leaders of various
organizations develop processes and procedures for overcoming barriers to knowledge building,
thus translating these processes to increase productivity, profitability and innovation. This will
further enable the organization to gain competitive advantage in its market niche. Furthermore,
researchers studied the barriers with number of recommendations to overcome these barriers

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(Dalkir, 2013). Unfortunately, such process is hindered by the lack of common framework or
general strategy that can be adapted by different organizations.
Therefore, one of the main problems is the lack of universal framework or strategy (Yao,
Yang, Fisher, Ma, & Fang, 2013). The basic objective of the study is to highlight the challenges
and problem faced by the O&G companies to adopt knowledge management activities and
initiatives.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Knowledge Management (KM) starts to rise around 1990. Davenport (2011) defined it as
“the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge”. This definition reflects
the basic idea for organizations to organize their information and knowledge in away it can be
reused. Latter in the 90’s Gartner group introduced the following definition.

"Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to

identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's
information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures,
and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers".

Knowledge management is considered important in business organizations since business

exists. Firms need to create and manage knowledge to compete in the market and to take more
market share though innovation and creativity which come with knowledge management.
Knowledge management let the management to bring creativity and innovation in its operations
and products. In 21st century, the main focus of almost all types of business is creativity and
knowledge management. As compared to traditional organizations, now businesses are more
concerned with their internal control, efficiency, information and knowledge management.
Knowledge is often considered as a strong and powerful tool that may change the entire world.
And can bring new innovative developments in the industry. Knowledge management is surely
inter and multidisciplinary business design having many dimensions of knowledge formation.
Knowledge management is the systematized groundwork, measurement and optimization
of the knowledge economies of the company. All the programs involving knowledge
management are focused on the company’s income statement; and its achievement depends on

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the culture, aims and structure of the company. So, knowledge management is an essential
strategy of gaining competitive advantage for organizations(Nonaka& Takeuchi, 2011;
Meihami&Meihami, 2014).
The management of knowledge is increasingly a part of technological organizations,
intended to promote the sharing of knowledge with the aim of successfully creating
innovation(Nonaka et al., 2013;Xu& Wang, 2014). This drives the need to study the role of
knowledge management in technological firms like those in the oil and gas industry since they
are rich in tacit knowledge. In addition, research shows that knowledge management is a theme
that is continually a reflection of the competencies and organizational practices
(Selamat&Choudrie, 2004;Paramsothy, Woods & Raman, 2013).

Knowledge Typology

Tacit Knowledge
There are many levels of knowledge in an organization’s resources. The first and most common
is structured knowledge obtainable from instruction books and databases (Selamat&Choudrie,
2004). The most difficult form of knowledge is tacit knowledge, which is the subjective and
transparent knowledge form (Selamat&Choudrie, 2004). Other authors define tacit knowledge as
that information that is informal and personal, with roots in procedures, action, emotions, values,
and commitment (Alwis& Hartman, 2008). This knowledge is unconventional and un-coded, and
is only acquirable through observation, imitation, and sharing of experiences (Kikoski&Kikoski,
2004). The idea of tacit knowledge was brought to the academic field by Rosenberg (1982), who
defined it as that which entails methods, techniques, and designs working in a certain manner and
with certain consequences, which a person cannot explain (Alwis&Hartman, 2008). Tacit
knowledge is important for technological firms, like those in the oil and gas industry since it
encompasses all technical and cognitive expertise of an individual. Therefore, this knowledge
entails all the individual’s talent, education, judgment, and experience.
Different academics and scholars have explored different approaches that firms can use
to vitalize and manage tacit knowledge.Alwis and Hartman (2008) showed that tacit knowledge
activation is through the involvement of individuals in innovative processes within the
organization, along with the stimulation of creativity. In addition, Kikoski and Kikoski (2004)
indicated that the capitalization and activation of tacit knowledge, can occur through group brain

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storming activities, which also can provide new and innovative ideas for the organization. These
can occur through social and group work activities, but for difficult-to-acquire tacit knowledge,
in-house learning is required (Nonaka et al., 2000;Xu& Wang, 2014). Learning occurs through
production and innovation processes of an organization, occurring both from the internal and
external environments of the organization.

Explicit Knowledge

The second form of knowledge is explicit knowledge described as knowledge embodied

in language or codes because of communication and verbalization processes, storage, and
transmission (Kikoski&Kikoski, 2004; Nonaka et al., 2000;Yang 2007). This form of knowledge
is widely recognized since it exists in print form like journals, books, and television among
others. This is the information individuals are aware of and share it in the form of scientific
formulas, data, and manuals among others (Alwis& Hartman, 2008). Nonaka et al., (2000)
showed that explicit and tacit may be different in form but are complements, since both forms are
essential in the creation of knowledge. Kikoski and Kikoski (2004) explained that explicit
knowledge in any form loses it meaning without tacit knowledge. The study results of these
researches show that a firm can only gain competitive advantage if it creates a knowledge
learning curve for individuals by developing both tacit and explicit knowledge
(Kikoski&Kikoski, 2004). The study of the evolution of tacit into explicit knowledge arises from
the aspect that these forms of knowledge are in use in knowledge management.
Studies show that knowledge can evolve from the individual’s information to
organizational knowledge, with the expansion and valuation of organizational knowledge
stimulating individual knowledge (Nonaka et al., 2000). The concept of evolution of knowledge
arises from the idea that knowledge in firms is convertible in a firm’s interactions to achieve
knowledge management process (Alwis& Hartman, 2008; Williams, 2006). Williams (2006)
referred this evolution of knowledge as the articulation of knowledge to show the interplay
between explicit and tacit knowledge. These studies indicate that effective management of tacit
and explicit knowledge in firms also entails the ability of the firm to create knowledge conversion
continually.

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Knowledge conversion occurs through socialization, where tacit knowledge converts to

tacit knowledge through sharing (Nonaka et al., 2000). Conversion also entails the externalization
of knowledge, where tacit knowledge converts to explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge
converts back to tacit knowledge through internalization or learning processes (Nonaka et al.,
2000; Williams, 2006). Nonaka et al., (2000) explored that the last mode of knowledge
conversion entails externalization, where explicit knowledge converts to explicit knowledge. This
conversion sums up knowledge management processes of knowledge creation, transfer, creation,
reuse, sharing, detection/discovery, and assessment/organization. The review of literature offers
insightful information for this research on the necessary processes a firm can use to build
knowledge management, and handle tacit and explicit knowledge. These basic principles form
the foundation of this study’s search for understanding of effective knowledge management in
O&Gindustry.

Knowledge Management in Organizations

Knowledge management developments targeted one of the following objective when

designing knowledge management system: (1) to quantify the knowledge and highlight its value
to organizations; (2) to develop a culture that is knowledge-intensive through boosting sharing of
knowledge and actively offering and seeking knowledge; (3) to design and construct a knowledge
infrastructure—through technical system, and network to connect people and provide people with
time, space, tools, encouragement and motivation for collaboration (Edvardsson& Durst,2013;
Davenport &Prusak 1998).
Knowledge management is a practice of discovering, capturing, and applying the
collective knowledge in an organization to help the organization compete (Meihami&Meihami,
2014).Aninvestigation of European firms by KPGM established that nearly 50 percent of the
companies have reported that they are suffering with the loss of turnover of main staff with 43
percent experiencing decreased supplier and client relations and 13 percent facing a loss in
monetary terms of income with the departure of one employee. 49 percent answered that when an
employee leaves the company it loses knowledge of best practice in specific area of operations.
Another one study showed that many organizations (61%) thought that the knowledge
they looked-for actually existed within the organization, but the problem is its recognition and
utilization. With these type of problems of identification, location, and application of knowledge,

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organizations are undertaking some systematic processes for the management of knowledge
(KPMG, 1998;Zheng, Yang, & McLean, 2010). Furthermore there were 20% of SMBs within
Europe and North America should have adapted knowledge management capabilities by the end
of 2010 to take harvest in their existence knowledge (Forrester research Inc., 2010)
The majorobjectives of knowledge management has reported in a sample of organizations
are followings: 86 percent of better decision making, 70 percent of reducing costs, 67% of
improving the productivity, 67% in fast response time in major issues,60% in sharing best
practice, creating new/additional business opportunities (58%), increasing profitability (53%),
increasing market share 42 percent, and similarly 42 percent in better staff retention and
increasing share price (23%)(KPMG, 2000).
Some studies have proposed that knowledge management facilitatesorganizations in
improving customer solutions quality;to form some reliable and versatile solutions to same types
of problems, in increasing resolution to problems of customer, ease field service calls in
becoming customer oriented (Davenport and Klahr, 1999). KPMG showed their survey result
that, 86% of firms reported better decision making for taking KM initiatives, 70% described
reduced costs, 67% informed improved productivity and 66% informed faster response time.
Over 50% asserted to experience high and increased profit. Some other benefits were also
observed in various areas for example creation of new business opportunities and the retention of
better staff (KPMG, 1998).
Another one survey found that fewer firms reporting such success like: 50% perceiving
cost/time reduction and productivity increase, 19% process improvement; 18% customer
orientation and satisfaction; 17% better decisions and forecasts; 15% enhancement in the
exchange of information; 13%, quality improvement; 8%, market leadership; and 8%, staff
qualifications and satisfaction. The prime motivation behind the KM initiatives is improving
customer service. Even though, a number of firms reporting benefits from knowledge
management, others suggest that the primary benefit to be obtained from knowledge management
is long-term(Mills & Smith, 2011;Edvardsson& Durst,2013).

Knowledge Management in Oil and Gas Domain

The state of knowledge management in the energy sector in general to reveal any future
directions for practice and research. Knowledge is essential for the operations and strategy of

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organizations within the oil and gas sector. This knowledge is in various forms, which include
scientific knowledge like petroleum chemistry, management knowledge like the motivation of
engineers to produce new operating practices, and technological knowledge like the efficient
running of generators (Edwards, 2008;Makani& Marche,2012). Knowledge management to this
sector is important since even at basic and simple processes like extraction of value in the supply
chain requires technological and scientific knowledge.
The O&G is one the complex field of business where any change in its production or
production cost can has unexpected consequences on other business. It consist many different
types of activities such as exploration, seismic studies, drilling, crude oil production, refining,
and delivering to the end consumers. It spans across many scientific and engineering fields such
as geology, chemical, reservoir, and petroleum (Dutta, 2013). Oil companies are categorized on
two types based on their location on the end-to-end of the field map. Upstream is the first type
where most of the activities are performed. Upstream companies search for oil using technology
and process, and drill production wells that produce the crude product and deliver it to processing
plant. Downstream companies operate processing plants to refine the crude product and produce
end customer products such fuel jet (for airplane), gas, petrol, diesel, and bitumen. Once these
product are ready for delivery the downstream companies will deliver them end consumers either
in business to customer scenario such a retail filling station or business to business scenario such
as airport or a construction’s company camp (Bhardwaj,2013).
With these types of diversities,O&G companies are faced with many challenges in finding
effective ways tomanage their business in knowledge-intensive areas such as drilling, geology
and geophysics, and to access the most valuable knowledge reservoir as one million man-years of
experience. Additionally, there are some other challenges like: providing performance
enhancement in the risky and expensive offshore megaprojects. Developing user-populated
knowledge bases, for reducing capital and operating overheads, improving utilization and up
time, and successful market positioning to compete in the global market becomes a major
challenge in the Oil and Gas industry. There are other challenges in that they should learn and
bring up-to-date new culture to handle not only human resource but also their knowledge that
arekept in the heads of people who are involved as expertise(Norheim&Fjellheim,2007).

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Information Processing in the Oil and Gas Domain

Information in the oil and gas industry is often in the form explicit knowledge or
data. Tacit knowledge exists in the form of expertise and individual knowledge of the engineers,
managers, and oil exploration experts among others (Edwards, 2008). The oil and gas industry
relies on technology or intelligent techniques like fuzzy reasoning, neural computing, and
evolutionary computing to analyze and interpret data (Masoud, Lofti, & Victor, 2004). The role
of using intelligent techniques in data interpretation and analysis is to make breakthroughs in
engineering and science to transform the data obtained into information, and turn information
into useful knowledge (Masoud, Lofti, & Victor, 2004). There are different information
processing approaches in the oil and gas industry, with the most common entailing intelligent
techniques (Carrillo, 2004).
Intelligent techniques are used in various functions of this industry, these are like
risk assessment, uncertainty analysis, data analysis and interpretation, knowledge discovery, data
fusion and mining (Masoud, Lofti, & Victor, 2004). These information-processing techniques use
data from different sources like geological data, well log, three dimension seismic analysis, and
production and management data (Edwards, 2008). The aim of using these techniques for this
industry is for exploration purposes, reduction of risks, increase production, and achieve efficient
production of wells, and extending the life of production wells (Masoud, Lofti, & Victor, 2004;
Carrillo, 2004). Therefore, information processing in this industry mainly uses technology for
various management, scientific, and technological reasons.

Value Added Knowledge Management in the Oil and Gas Industry

The review of literature indicates that knowledge plays an essential role in the
operations and strategy of firms in the oil and gas industry. This section examines the literature
on knowledge management practices within Oil & Gas domain, and explores possible values
added knowledge management examples in the industry. The Oil and Gas industry strives to
create better and innovative ways of carrying out operations through value added knowledge
management (Makani& Marche 2012). Collison and Parcell (2004) in a study found knowledge
management strategies for project teams that made use of innovative aspects of traditional
knowledge management practices like virtual teamwork, and learning achieved greater efficiency

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and production. The paper drew from the case study of BP, which successfully made use of
virtual teamwork approach to improve knowledge sharing (Collison&Parcell, 2004).
Consequently, BP was able to improve its expertise globally over its geographically dispersed
branches to have each expertise assist in bearing local problems, like trouble-shooting of
equipment failures (Edwards, 2008). Collison and Parcell (2004) found that BP was able to
achieve such successful results since it adds value to its knowledge management by making use
of an innovative learning strategy. In this organization, learning as a means to transfer knowledge
and share information, was modeled on the theme, “Learning before, Learning during and
Learning after” (Collison&Parcell, 2004). The company makes use of communities of practice, to
create teams that share a common bond under the sharing of expertise and passion. This
introduces the use of communities of practice, as an essential practice in knowledge management
as it encourages the existence of shared communities, teamwork, and information sharing through
group work (Wenger & Snyder, 2000). To Barrow (2001), adding value to the knowledge
management strategy using communities of practice as BP did, entails the creation of different
team-networks to cover major business and management operations.
The review of literature shows that the oil and gas industry has taken advantage of
knowledge management approaches for decades. Consequently, the industry has seen rapid
changes, as knowledge management has assisted the industry to manage mergers, explore the
advances of technology, manage acquisitions, carried out extensive offshore drilling, and
managed environmental issues. Knowledge management plays a major role in making operations
in the oil and gas industry more effective and efficient. However, application of knowledge
management initiatives has not been easy as the industry faces several problems, discussed in
detail in this section.

Knowledge Development and Capturing

One of the major challenges of application of knowledge management and knowledge

management systems initiatives in the oil and gas industry has been the challenge of effective
knowledge capturing and development. This is because, the oil and gas industry information
development and capturing, has faced problems arising from new technologies, new partners, and
outsourcing (Barrow, 2001). The challenge is that these management approaches provide new
and dynamic ways of managing information requiring the constant improvement of knowledge

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management approaches. Moreover, the industry faces challenges in coordinating the

geographically dispersed workforce in offering support to knowledge management development
and knowledge capturing (Leavitt, 2002). This is complicated with the need for these teams to
offer technology support, asset management, and knowledge transfer capabilities to knowledge
development and capturing initiatives (Barrow, 2001). The geographical dispersion of teams
especially specialists makes it difficult for the industry to apply knowledge development and
capturing techniques or processes, behaviors, and tools, which deliver the right information to the
right teams in the right content, at the right time, and within the right context (Reinmoeller& Van
Baardwijk, 2005). The issues of this challenge is that it prevents teams from making the best
decisions, creation of innovative ideas, and therefore, preventing the industry from exploiting
new business opportunities (Leavitt, 2002).
The other challenge to knowledge development and capturing are business issues
involving capacity management, environmental issues, and cost reduction. These business issues
present the oil and gas industry challenges in creating knowledge management initiatives that can
forecast, schedule, process, and use innovative techniques (Reinmoeller& Van Baardwijk, 2005).
Moreover, such business issues common in the current business world present challenges to
knowledge management initiatives by making it difficult to improve the convenience and speed
(Leavitt, 2002). In addition, these business issues make it difficult of knowledge management
initiatives to expand and address point-of-sale adoption of technology and the achievement of
effectiveness of procedure.

Knowledge Retention and Sharing

Studies by Edwards (2008) showed that the industry makes use of knowledge
development and capturing techniques to retain and share information from different sectors like
engineering, exploration, science, and management. However, these functions are hampered by
challenges from new and increasingly pertinent issues in operations like the retention of valuable
knowledge especially during the period when workforce ages. Moreover, knowledge retention
and sharing in the sector is hampered by an increasing and diminishing efficiency in the
communities of practice affected by workforce rates (Pauleen et al., 2007). Moreover, the
industry is facing challenges arising from the fine-tuning of best practices by many companies,
which transfer process with the use of content management systems (Van den Berg &Popescu,

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2005). In such fine-tuned environments, it is difficult for the workforce to retain and share
knowledge especially in the communities of practice, which further reduces the downtime in oil
and gas field sites across the world (Leavitt, 2002). Moreover, knowledge retention and sharing
faces challenges from the many mergers and acquisitions that are a common business practice
with the oil and gas sector (Pauleen et al., 2007).
The mergers and acquisitions lead to major turnover rates, growth, and contraction
fluctuations of workforce, and internal deployments making application of basic knowledge
management initiatives a challenge (Leavitt, 2002; Reinmoeller& Van Baardwijk, 2005). Studies
indicate that according to the Society for Petroleum Engineers, the median age for employees is
47. The studies also indicate that the turnover rates continually shift since the attrition rate in the
last decade was at 44 by 2010, among oil engineers. This indicates that in the last two years the
industry has lost approximately 231,000 years of accumulated engineering or specialist
knowledge and experience due to retirement.
Therefore, making the retention and sharing of knowledge difficult for knowledge
management initiatives since, almost half of the workforce in the new decade will be new (Van
den Berg &Popescu, 2005). In addition, the retention and sharing of knowledge is hampered by
the loss of more than sixty percent of employees in the upstream gas and oil companies, along
with their knowledge and skills. Therefore, the largest challenge for the oil and gas industry’s
knowledge management retention and sharing initiatives is the high attrition rates or brain drain
phenomenon.

Knowledge Sharing

Sharma and Singh (2012) concurred with several other authors that organizations’
management lacks adequate time to share knowledge and even identify the respective colleagues
in need of the specific knowledge. Ardichvili, Vaughn and Tim (2003) postulated that personnel
within the organization are often engrossed in their daily duties and have very limited time to
engage in knowledge building. Time constraints acts as a major barrier, inhibiting the generation,
gathering, organizing and sharing of knowledge within the organizational facets. Knowledge is
not useful if not disseminated to the specific sources. Personnel within the organization also lack
sufficient time to identify colleagues who need the specific knowledge.

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Consequently, there is lack of integration of knowledge management sharing initiatives

into the organization’s goals. The management of many organizations is driven by the
organizational goals established beforehand. However, if knowledge management strategies miss
out as part of the strategic approach, then employees would not be compelled to share knowledge.
On the other hand, Weisberg (2009) revealed that lack of managerial direction in the
communication of the succinct values and benefits of knowledge building is a barrier to
organizational knowledge building. There is need for proper managerial leadership to effectively
communicate the values of knowledge building in the organization.
According to Tikkanen (2010), age and gender differences hinder knowledge building
significantly. Members of the opposite gender cannot mix freely in the organization and share
knowledge on a free platform. Similarly, employees within a wide age gap cannot discuss certain
aspects of knowledge building. This is because of the perceive ‘respect’ that the youth give to the
elderly. Differences in education levels may also inhibit sharing of knowledge due to poor
interpersonal skills and level of knowledge that the person possesses. Indeed, age, gender and
level of education differences interplay to inhibit knowledge sharing and transfer within the
organization.
Moreover, many organizations lack proper mechanisms for capturing, evaluating and
assessing past mistakes for the purposes of improvement. Evidently, there is no feedback or
effective communication to bolster individual and corporate learning effects. Knowledge building
is often informed by past mistakes and successes. While employees shun failure and refuse to
learn from it, knowledge building is impaired from their tacit actions. Riege (2007) averred that
informal communication characterizes most organizational communication network. This kind of
communication cannot therefore facilitate knowledge building in the organization. Shortage of
formal and informal forums for sharing knowledge inhibits knowledge building. There should be
sufficient formal and informal spaces for the generation of new ideas or knowledge.
Knowledge sharing in organizations is inhibited by the lack of credibility and accuracy of
knowledge. Weisberg (2009) insinuated that there is lack of trust in the source of knowledge,
thus limiting knowledge sharing. It is imperative to note that knowledge must emanate from
trusted sources to be effective towards improving organizational performance. According to
Riege (2007) on knowledge management models, information gathered must be credible and
accurate to yield accurate analysis for organizational change and success.

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Further, knowledge sharing in organizations is inhibited by the lack of trust in employees

who are bound to misuse knowledge. There is a general fear by employees that knowledge
generated by them is likely to be misused leading to other employees or the management taking
unjust credit. This serves to demoralize the employees and thus restrict knowledge sharing in the
organization. Trust in the organization is an imperative facet that bolsters knowledge sharing
(Ardichvili, Vaughn & Tim, 2003). Employees must trust each other to share knowledge
effectively.
In addition, the precedent communication and knowledge flow restricts the flow of
knowledge in a certain predetermined direction. Weisberg (2009) avers that the top-down flow of
information inhibits knowledge sharing since employees cannot pass pertinent knowledge to the
management of the organization. Hierarchical organizational structure slows down sharing
practices, due to the established protocols involves in sharing information. The relationship that
employees maintain with their superiors also plays an integral role in facilitating or inhibiting
knowledge sharing. Poor interpersonal relationship with their superiors often restricts the sharing
of knowledge.
Furthermore, lack of Information Technology (IT) which providestechnical support to the
integrated Information Technology system inhibit knowledge sharing and when these systems is
experiencing downtimes, there are obstruction in communication flows as well as work routine
(Riege, 2007).

CONCLUSION

On the basis of delve analysis of knowledge management activities related problems in

O&G, this study concludes that oil and gas sector should adopt and bring change in cultural
values by enhancing socialization. Sector should promote personnel interaction by conducting
knowledge sharing seminars/workshops. It is concluded that sector should eager to adopt modern
technology and train employees to be compatible with the ever changing market dynamics.
Gender differences should be eradicated so that knowledge sharing, capturing and development
take place in the sector. Oil and gas organizations should form flexible organizational structures
so that information flows through the organization without and impediments upstream and
downstream.

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