Knowledge management for enhancing school strategic planning capacity: Examining the SECI knowledge creation model in school context

This study aims to examine the effect of Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) four modes of knowledge conversion including socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation on enhancing strategic planning capacity of schools in Hong Kong, and to identify the critical success factors for institutionalizing the SECI knowledge creation mechanism in the Hong Kong school context. The education quality assurance policy and the high speed of knowledge expansion knowledge have impacted on and created challenges for school management. The nature of school management becomes more challenging, complex, analytic and data driven. Developing an innovative management approach to support schools to leverage knowledge from the existing organisational information and data resources to plan for improvement will provide practical help to school leaders and also contribute to the existing school management theories. The study seeks to identify the critical success factors that facilitate the institutionalisation of the Nonaka’s (1994) SECI knowledge creation mechanism within schools.
Experimental research design were adopted as the research strategy. A quantitative questionnaire survey were conducted to collect data from secondary schools in Hong Kong. Multilevel structural equation modelling were applied to examine the predictive effects of the mechanism on strategic planning capacity and to identify the school level and teacher level contextual factors for institutionalising the SECI mechanism. The research design adopts an experimental design with a questionnaire survey. The experimental group was 20 Quality Education Fund project schools in which the SECI mechanism has been institutionalised. The control group was another 10 primary schools and 10 secondary schools which will be randomly drawn from 450 secondary schools and 550 primary schools in Hong Kong respectively. A self-developed questionnaire survey were be conducted among the experimental and control groups. Multilevel model were applied to confirm the theoretical model.
Results show that the externalization and combination processes support the planning, implementation and evaluation processes, and collaborative culture is identified as the critical success factor to facilitate the externalization and combination processes for creating knowledge for implementing the strategic plan. Nurturing a culture of systems thinking in the schools are critical to managing effective strategic planning processes. Copyright © 2018 The 2nd International Conference on Education and E-Learning (ICEEL 2018)