Advancing organizational effectiveness and knowledge management implementation

In the recent past, most practitioners and researchers in hospitality have focused on the development of programs and practices for preventing employees leaving a job. The purpose of this paper is to examine an alternative focus, which is the possibility of sharing and retaining the knowledge which resides in employees' minds. The operational practices of this focus would not only add value for internal and external customers, but also benefit overall organizational effectiveness in today's knowledge-oriented era. Semi-structured interviews were administered in four International five-star hotels in Taiwan. This study aims to examine the extent to which the hotels implement knowledge management (KM) practices, the manner in which they are implemented and the impediments they face. The data clearly shows that KM practices, such as programs and cultures that support knowledge acquiring, sharing and storing, can benefit such hotels. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.