Evaluation of the study

Today, studies of the concept 'knowledge' have reached the point when knowledge has become a compendium and a resource explored by organisations, and assessed, accumulated and shared. Progress of information and communication technologies contribute to the growth of knowledge, and the role of knowledge in management of any organisational process is growing, accordingly. In other words, the more knowledge, the more the need for knowledge sharing. As this study has showed, the reality is a little more complicated than that. By increasing of the amount of knowledge, the volume and speed of knowledge sharing will not necessarily grow. If an employee's knowledge is a valuable resource, why should he/she share it? If an employee has knowledge, why should he/she run a risk and apply other employees’ knowledge instead of his/her own? It is not easy to share one's own knowledge and to obtain knowledge from others; therefore, an organisation should create a very good motivation for their personnel to do so, and should be capable of rewarding employees for knowledge sharing. The study revealed that this provision is very much related to the organisation's cultural values and will depend both on the individual factor and on the organisational factor. Firstly, an individual's knowledge cannot be strictly separated from an employee's knowledge, because, in favour of the organisation, the employee uses not only the knowledge acquired through the professional development process, but also the knowledge acquired over the life course. Secondly, knowledge-sharing in the organisation will also be affected by the internal organisational environment. People, processes and technologies are the success blocks that help the organisation to successfully survive in the overcrowded information market.

know approximately which factors affect knowledge sharing in the organisation with regard to CI . Organisations need finely designed and efficient business processes to create a good working environment. They must implement processes and technologies to facilitate the distribution and use of knowledge. Organisations must speed up the flow of information from one employee to another, and from individual persons to the entire organisation. It is clear that the new information and communication technologies play an important role in knowledge distribution and sharing processes.

This is because much exists in the form of texts and electronic documents. New systems, for example, Internet, document management systems and databases, significantly contribute to knowledge sharing.

The initial question of this study was open and served for clarification of initial associations: why does the CI process in Latvian enterprises have inherently weak informative and reversible links? The question cannot be answered by formulating zero hypotheses and testing them via respective analytical statistics.

The purpose of the question was not to analyse the past, thus remaining within the frames of a previously known alternative, but to find out the opinion of the representatives of organisations with regard to the possible current reasons. Did the qualitative study achieve maximum results and reveal the essence of the phenomenon? The qualitative study revealed the research subject in a more detailed manner and allowed evaluation of the research problem both from the employee and supervisor perspectives. In today's competitive environment, many employees do not feel safe in their position and often do not disclose their knowledge, which could be used for enhancing effectiveness of the enterprise, or they are afraid to lose their advantages due to sharing knowledge with others. This affects informative and reversible links and hinders the desirable efficiency of communication. Is this possibly the biggest obstacle as to why the CI process in Latvian enterprises has inherently weak informative and reversible links? Knowledge is joint, and it should be shared for it to be of higher value. When knowledge is shared and used, the people who use it modify it. This subsequently promotes the creation of new knowledge.

The qualitative study discovered a new dimension for evolution of this research stream. One of the issues for further studies is an identification of the factors that stimulate transformation of knowledge:

How to transform the tacit knowledge into explicit form? This study showed that organisations understand that the knowledge possessed by their employees comprises the organisation's most valuable stock; however, only some organisations begin to seriously accumulate their knowledge. The tacit knowledge and their explicit knowledge dominate in the organisation. People have knowledge derived from experience. The overall human work adds to the knowledge that the organisation can accumulate. It affects the efficiency of organisational activities. Distribution and use of tacit knowledge occurs when employees provide free exchange of knowledge in the course of work. A relevant question:

What processes can occur with the knowledge within the organisation? Initially, knowledge occurs, for example, from employee experience, from the information stored in databases and from other sources.

Once an organisation understands that it has some knowledge, it tries to retain it, as it is a valuable capital for organisational activity. In turn, when knowledge is stored, the organisation's main task is to ensure its efficient use, so that one person's knowledge becomes known to others and employees share the knowledge; in such a way, knowledge is distributed from the place of accumulation to all employees

In addition, in further studies, it is important to ascertain how the flow of knowledge in the organisation takes place. This study analysed the factors influencing knowledge sharing in CI, focusing on the organisation's cultural values and their impact on provision of organisational processes. Further studies could evaluate the knowledge phenomenon from the point of view of process, for example, how do gaps in knowledge emerge? Relevant questions could be, for example, how do the staff see the flow of knowledge in the enterprise? How do the employees of organisations obtain knowledge when needed?

With whom do people collaborate and share information and knowledge?

Evaluating critically, certain shortcomings could be defined for the qualitative research performed within the framework of this study, for example, the discussion participants provided answers of different degrees of detailed elaboration; the responses were sometimes insignificant, ‘fuzzy’ or too detailed, and coding of answers was also complicated, while some participants spoke relatively more and frequently. If shortcomings are identified in the process of study, the qualitative research process occurs in accordance with the research objectives. The qualitative research resulted in identifying hypotheses.

With regard to the study methodology, it is concluded that the basic principle - objectivity - was adhered to, as the results obtained from the qualitative and quantitative research methods used were impartial.

In contrast with the qualitative research, the quantitative research began with existing knowledge that already contained generalisations and explanations, that is, theories on the relationships between certain events. In this study phase, the hypothesis proved true or untrue. The reason why two research approaches may sound, contradictory, is that quantitative designs often do not realise the results of the previous qualitative phase.

Did the quantitative phase of this study confirm the proposed hypotheses and reveal the essence of the phenomenon? Aggregation of the research results allowed identification of effective tools that would facilitate knowledge-sharing for ensuring the process of CI. Overall, the quantitative research was inconclusive about the relationships between investigated phenomena. This study analysed different perspectives, namely, employee communication culture and knowledge sharing as values rooted in the dyadic relationships between the employee and the supervisor, and in their assessment of satisfaction with communication in the organisation in the CI process. This study generally showed positive correlations between CI and communication satisfaction; however, significant inconsistencies were found in the results from the employee and supervisor perspectives. This means that the results of revealed significant themes, exploration of which would require in-depth data collection and analysis.

For example, what transformations should the communication system of the organisation undergo in order to facilitate reduction of these contradictions between employees and supervisors? What causes such contradictions in the organisation? Initially, knowledge is created, and the organisation's mission is to take possession of it. Here, an essential role is played by the cultural values and habits that were analysed in this study. Organisations obtain knowledge from their employees and operable systems, and from the external environment. On this basis, organisations can create new knowledge, synthesise it and

studies performed in Latvia; however, the concepts ‘trust’ and ‘organisational identification’ have revealed serious contradictions with regard to the perspectives of employees and supervisors in CI.

In further studies, clarification of the knowledge codification process, which includes aggregation of knowledge from various sources, its accumulation in one place, for example, placement of knowledge in databases, as well as mapping of knowledge, is required, so that the picture of the organisational stock of knowledge is clearly visible to the employees of the organisation. Clarification of what type of knowledge is possessed by the organisation is also necessary. This could facilitate trust in the organisation and increase employee loyalty and motivation to share the knowledge. As this study showed, it is very important that people are loyal and sufficiently reliable and shared their knowledge with other colleagues. The main task of knowledge codification is to make individual knowledge also available to other employees who need this knowledge. The knowledge already expressed should be available at the right time and place. The knowledge arrived at in the organisational memory, should be easily available, for example, correctly indexed in the organisational database. The capacity of the organisation to create new knowledge from that which already exists depends on how well knowledge is mapped and accumulated. As a result of research evolution, the process of how knowledge is mapped and accumulated should be studied, so that the organisation's cultural values, the significance of which was shown in this study, would stimulate and create the added value of organisational processes.

Another current problem revealed by this study is transfer of knowledge. Knowledge should be actively passed on to those to whom it can be useful. It is a very important moment in organisational development. In order to secure this process, it should be first established whom to inform with new knowledge, that is, to whom or to where to transfer the knowledge and how to provide better receipt and use of the transferred knowledge. The field of study could be directly associated with transformation of the communication system, both on the horizontal and the vertical levels of management. The top management of an enterprise should provide active support of each activity aimed at improvement of the business activity. In turn, the board of the enterprise is responsible for creating an adequate cultural environment, where knowledge-sharing is facilitated and each employee's contribution to organisational capital of knowledge is appreciated.