The Impact of Knowledge Management on Developing Career Path Planning and Development: An Empirical Study of Echo-cardiologists in Egypt.

• Author: ElKhouly, Sayed Elsayed
• Position: Report

INTRODUCTION

Understanding the global market and its dynamics is rather a hard thing to follow. The modern business climate is an ever changing dynamic workplace for all work areas (O'Meara, et al.2000; Daft 2004). As businesses enter the rising waters of the global market place they need to sustain for themselves highly qualified and skilled workforce to build a backbone for their continuity in the market place (Noe 2005). Therefore, employee training and development is among the ways of gaining both knowledge and experience in the work environment (Ford 1997). Thus, it is expected that the interaction between training and business will be inevitable in the near future as competition rises on both the individual and organizational level. This means that training professionals will need to focus their efforts on improving business results and organizational leaders will need to ensure that training initiatives deliver value. It has been seen for a long time now that there is a huge unemployment rate about 13% in the Egyptian society. Taking into consideration that the Egyptian society is a young society where youth consists half of it. So, to reduce this unemployment rate and to find a way of living for themselves they are trying to enhance their abilities through having training courses. Especially, in the area of medicine, physicians are obliged to stay up dated with recent technology and medical interventions. Thus, for them continuous learning is a key knowledge channel. However, they face lots of difficulties when choosing the right program for them especially with the lack of accredited programs that fulfill their desires. Cardiologists in specific faced a huge challenge when attempting to find a good training program especially in the area of cardiac-sonography. But, recently there has been a program that provided for them this kind of learning process.

Thus, for them to answer the question of "Did this training have any impact on their career planning and development?" they need to establish means to evaluate the training in terms of its training transfer. Training transfer, learning transfer, or transfer are all terms used to determine the amount of information a employee gets form undergoing training such as traditional classroom training that is intended to then be used by the employee to enhance the job related performance (Baldwin and Ford 1988). Training is not only foreseen on the cognitive level only but also there are different internal and external factors that will affect the degree of transfer (Bates and Khasawneh 2005). Learning characteristics, intervention design and delivery, and work environment influences are the three primary factors put by Burke and Hutchins (2007) representing internal and external categories. With this kind of knowledge it is necessary to see its impact on their career path and the real effect of the program on their knowledge ability, did they really benefit from the program and its impact on their skills and their development.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Knowledge and Culture

There are different definitions of culture that we can state. For instance according to (Hofstede) (1993) (2001) culture is "a collective programming of the mind". Also, (Schein) (1985) defined organizational culture as the tacit or implicit knowledge that the working individuals behold which consequently reflects how the group behaves. According to (Delong & Fahey, 2000, p. 118) taking into consideration knowledge management, organizational culture determines the social code (in terms of norms and values) and determines the user and the controller of knowledge. Looking at Figure 3 we can see the conceptual linkage between culture and knowledge management which gives a better understanding to the kind of cultures within organizations. (Baylor.D.L, Emory and Baylor.T.K(2006))

The Case of Egypt

The case in Egypt is rather complex due to the sever competition and the high demand on job opportunities. Thus, according to the findings of (Rania M.Nafie)(2012) she stated that "The Egyptian society is generally more ascribed than achieved, and information and knowledge is related to power, so sharing depends on the parallel status of the knowledge sharing partner. Decisions can only be challenged by a person with higher authority than oneself." "Sharing depends on who, rather than what". Also, the findings of El-Khouly & author (2016), shows the negative effect of knowledge transfer on the organizational culture in the health care sector in Egypt. As seen in the previous section the distinction between the kinds of knowledge is extremely important to understand; consequently we need to tackle tacit and explicit knowledge.

Significance of the Study

The primary purpose of this study was to test the impact of knowledge management in terms of transfer of knowledge on career path planning and development on echo-cardiologists in Egypt. The focus of this study is to investigate the knowledge transfer and the training transfer of a continuing education program in the field of medicine on the enhancement of both the participants understanding and career promotion. This study was designed to further analyze and understand the gap between pre and post the training program on three aspects which are: understanding the training curriculum, application of the curriculum, and the behavioral change between before and after the program. Self-perception test has been used to ensure lack of bias. Scoreboard survey has been used to test the significance of the hypothesis. Likert type survey was used in the pre-post training comparison of program behavior.

METHODOLOGY

Aim of the Study

Although Egypt has one of the strongest higher education systems in the medical field, yet there are areas that need to be explored. Sonographic training for echo-cardiologists is one of those fields that were not introduced before in the continuing education programs. This study aims to examine the influence of introducing training programs for echo-cardiologists in Egypt on both their career path planning and development and whether these programs are implemented as they were intended to be. The area of career path planning and development has been tackled previously on different sectors. But yet the medical sector has not been intensively covered. However cardiologists are among the groups that have not been analyzed. The study is considered to be a first of its kind in this field of application in Egypt. Thus, new insights related to understanding the effect of training programs and their relationship with organizations through the link of the trainee will be discovered.

Research Questions and Hypothesis

This paper attempts to answer the following questions:

Q1: To what extent knowledge management influences career path planning for echo-cardiologists in Egypt

Q2: what extent knowledge management influence career path development for echo-cardiologists in Egypt?

Q3: To what extent there is a gap between the expected from the received transfer of knowledge and the perceived transfer of training affecting the echo-cardiologists after completion the training program?

The following are the proposed hypotheses:

[H.sub.o]1: There is no significant influence from the perceived transfer of knowledge (behavioral transfer) among the cardiologists who are attempting a training program for choosing echo-cardiography on their career path planning as a self-development tool. This is in terms of their understanding to the core program content and its related knowledge accumulation in the form of program setting.

[H.sub.o]2: There is no significant influence from the perceived transfer of knowledge (behavioral transfer) among the echo-cardiologists who attended the training program on their career path development. This is in terms of organizational response to the program in the form of reward and promotion.

[H.sub.o]3: [H.sub.o][3.sub.a]) There is no significant gap between the expected transfer of knowledge and the perceived transfer of knowledge (behavioral transfer) acknowledged by the echo-cardiologists taking the training program. This is in terms of transfer of learning and degree of understanding between the intended curriculum and the actual toppings being covered throughout the programs

[H.sub.o][3.sub.b]) There is no significant gap between the expected transfer of training and the perceived transfer of training (behavioral transfer) acknowledged by the echo-cardiologists taking the training program. This is in terms of the degree of application between the intended curriculum and the actual toppings being applied throughout the program.

The survey and the interview data for this study came from trainees who attended a 3-4 month medical training program. Both the research questions and hypotheses will be addressed after the completion of the survey and satisfying the pre and post sections.

Research Design

To achieve the purpose of this study, a single cross-sectional descriptive research design is used.

Sampling

The study sample was a convenient sample of 310 applicants representing the 4 governorates stated in the population section. Only 301 applicants completed the survey and included usable data; the 9 incomplete surveys were excluded from the sample. The sample included both males and females with a percentage of 86% and 14%, respectively. All the participants stated that they work in both private and public sectors. The randomness of the sample was based on the demand for the program and that they willingly enrolled to complete it. All participants have been contacted through the program administration and their consent has been taken upon enrolling to the program. The study took place at the location of the training program and the participants signed consent that they have never been exposed to such a program before.

Tools of Data Collection

A paper-based survey divided into 5 sections has been handed to the participants...