Knowledge Management Infrastructure and Product and Process Innovation: The Role of Trust, Technological Support, and Employee Incentives

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of knowledge management infrastructure (KMI) on the development of product and process innovation of Iraqi textile industry and exploring. Literature suggests that organizations must choose the best way to implement knowledge management. However, there has been a lack of an integrated implementation framework for knowledge management infrastructure. The paper uses survey among 399 middle managers in the Iraqi textile industry, the present study empirically tested the hypotheses using structural equation modeling. The main results show that all dimensions of KMI (organizational trust, technological support, and incentives) have direct impact on product and process innovation. There are three limitations for this study. First, because data for this research were collected from middle managers working in the Iraqi textile industry, findings may not be applicable for textile industry innovation in other countries due to the possible knowledge management infrastructure differences. However, in Iraq, where the centralization of power is still common, using multiple informants may be redundant, and is unlikely to result in advantages such as greater accuracy of data. The lessons learned from the research paper is useful for the Iraqi textile industry, the government sector should introduce new KMI for the textile factories to carry out their activities. This study provides new information to policy makers in understanding managers’ behaviour associated with KMI in innovation.