Factors influencing employees' usage behavior of KMS in e-business

The shift from a product-based to a knowledge-based economy has resulted in an increasing demand for organizations to implement knowledge management systems (KMS) at an accelerating pace. However, little attention has been paid to what influences the employees' intention to use such. This study presented an integrative framework to explore factors affecting employees' KMS usage behavior; particularly social and political ones. Results from a sample of 144 employees mostly from four international semiconductor manufacturing companies in the Hsin-Chu Science-based Industrial Park in Taiwan strongly support the integrative framework in predicting employees' intention to use KMS. The analysis shows that subjective norm, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived power security all have significant positive influence on KMS usage. In addition, interaction effects of subjective norm, computer self-efficacy, and perceived power security on perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness were also found. These findings may help IT departments to develop KMS which are well accepted by employees, and provide IT managers more insight into methods of promoting this new technology.