Culture impact on knowledge management adoption in the hospitality industry of Nigeria

The effect of culture on various aspects of life, business and disciplines such as knowledge management has been much studied. Hospitality has also received much attention because it, among others, can produce and redistribute wealth whether in developed and developing economies who often find it as an invaluable means of generating foreign income. Nonetheless, there is no combination of the three areas in a single study done in a developing economy. The study fills this gap by investigating the impact of culture on the adoption of knowledge management in the hospitality industry of Nigeria.

Though criticised by some, Hofstede’s culture model is being widely used and therefore it is applied in this study along with some aspects of technology acceptance model (TAM) to develop a research model. Hofstede presented individuality and collectivism as well as career success and quality of life as opposites whereas this study considered them individually as potentially impacting on KM adoption.

After operationalising the model into a 45-item questionnaire, responses were sought from 400 Nigerians in the hospitality industry. Analysis was done on 195 returned questionnaires. The findings showed as significant collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, career success, quality of life, short- and long-term orientation. Power distance and individualism, on the other hand, were not significant. There is no precedence to these findings because there apparently exists no earlier research that endeavoured to examine culture effect on the adoption of knowledge management in the Nigerian hospitality industry. The study implications and areas for further investigation are given in this paper.