The Relationship between Knowledge Management and Trust: Malaysian Perspective

Abstract

In delivering a professional service to its clients, knowledge is an auditing firm’s core capital. In conducting its practice and business, an auditing firm not only captures knowledge within its organization from among its own people but also from its clients to whom it has a responsibility and duty to protect. The nature of auditing firms somehow controls the flow of knowledge in the firms. Knowledge management is crucial, especially for knowledge-intensive firms that utilize and capitalize knowledge in all their transactions. The challenges are to highlight the knowledge management factors in auditing firms and how much knowledge management contributes to their organizational effectiveness. This empirical study reveals that knowledge dissemination, knowledge storing and knowledge protection are more prominent in this type of industry. In addition, trust plays a very crucial role in knowledge flow. Knowledge dissemination was found to be a main contributor towards organizational effectiveness and trust prevails as an important factor in knowledge management applications in the industry.