1.1. Knowledge management

Nowadays, knowledge, innovation and creativity are widely recognized as the most crucial competitive factors capable of substantially supporting and foster a compa­ny’s adaptation, survival and outstanding performance (^{Sigala and Chalkiti, 2015}). There is a reciprocal relationship between these three concepts, since an organization’s ability to generate ideas and innovate is based on learning, broadening its knowledge base and its people sharing their knowledge.

In a context of continuous change and uncertainty, it is critical for companies to develop skills to create and acquire knowledge, learn, share what has been learned and put it into practice. Administrative knowledge is associated with business success and the ability of a company to adapt to environmental changes and challenges. Due to knowledge, companies can innovate, create organizational routines, grow, be sustainable and gain competitive advantages (^{Calvo-Mora, Navarro-García, Rey-Moreno, and Periañez-Cristobal, 2016}).

According to ^{Chidambaranathan and Rani (2015)}, knowledge is widely recognized as a competitive advantage and a growing number of organizations are incorporating KM as a core strategy to improve organizational effectiveness. Knowledge is generally distributed within an organization tacitly and explicitly. Tacit knowledge is what lies in the minds of employees within an organization, and is the most critical factor for its success. Explicit knowledge is freely available in print as well as electronic media within an organization and is easily accessible.

^{Jasinskas, Svagzdiene, and Simanavicius (2015)} and ^{Rabeea, Nassar, and Khalid (2017)} explain that knowledge is very important to obtain competitive advantages in the activity of a company. Knowledge is an important source and probably one of the most valuable with regards to competitive capacity. The ability of KM to influence a company’s competitive capacity depends on how successfully the company applies different types of knowledge. Companies must take advantage of the knowledge of their employees, develop, organize and apply it in the creation of new products, innovations and business decisions.

KM improves organizational effectiveness by integrating people, processes, and technology and is a process that helps orga­ni­za­tions find, select, organize, disseminate and transfer important infor­mation and experience needed for activities such as problem-solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning and decision making. KM is the process of acquiring, storing, sharing, creating and using knowledge for process improvement from intensive teamwork and effective knowledge sharing among individuals (^{Lee, Shiue, and Chen, 2016}).

Likewise, ^{Cahyaningsih, Sensuse, Arymurthy, and Wibowo (2017)}, conclude that KM is a strategic issue in organizations capable of improving organizational performance. KM can narrow the knowledge gap between people and the organization, and improve organizational learning for it to achieve its goals with collaboration and cooperation between employees and the organization, and can improve the performance of human capital management, among others.

There is a consensus that the KM is a structured approach to creating, coding, and using, collecting, exchanging, measuring and retaining knowledge to respond to environmental challenges and create additional value. To be valuable to a company, KM should lead to changes in behavior and the development of new ideas, processes, practices and policies. Although there are several models that explain KM processes, most of them comprise the following five generic processes: acquisition, generation and creation, coding, storage, exchange, transfer and utilization of knowledge.

In this sense, ^{Donate and Sánchez (2015)} explain that KM is used to develop and implement initiatives that improve the efficiency of the processes of a business, increase the productivity and quality of its services, and find new solutions and products for its customers. Therefore, ideal conditions should be set to promote and optimize the use of KM practices such as human resources management, an appropriate corporate culture, technology implementation and organizational structures. KM is a set of activities, initiatives and strategies that companies use to generate, store, transfer and apply knowledge to improve organizational performance.

In addition, ^{Lendzion (2015)}, states that, nowadays, knowledge is a key resource for organizations. It is a basic element of the competences of people, who execute processes related to identifying, creating, obtaining, purifying, protecting and transferring knowledge, which is directly related to the shape of the social work environment, the behavior of people, the processes of individual thinking and in particular health, both physical and intellectual, a hierarchy of human values, norms and attitudes that manage their behavior, loyalty and mutual trust, level of collectivity and innovation, among others.

KM is a process of creating and using knowledge to improve the effectiveness of corporate activities; it promotes a complex attitude to identify, manage and share all information resources, such as databases, documents, policies and procedures but most importantly, experience and skills not expressed as explicitly as the employee has it; in addition to an adequate technical and organizational infrastructure that enables the exchange of knowledge, with a choice of the right information technology (^{Koloniari and Fassoulis, 2017}). In this line of thinking, ^{Tongsamsi and Tongsamsi (2017)} argue that KM requires a process of collecting and exchanging the knowledge of the individual, applying practices of a learning organization (^{Alharithy, 2015}).

^{Hussain, Konar, and Ali (2016)} identified personality, willingness to share and organizational commitment as determining factors in individual participation for the exchange of knowledge within an organization. KM is a social process, where the influence of social and cultural factors that allow integrating the knowledge, skills and experience of employees should be taken into account in order to obtain a better competitive advantage and effective administrative practices in daily operations. Just as technologies, motivations and culture affect knowledge-sharing behaviors. Within this framework, ^{Alaarj, Abidin-Mohamed, and Ahmad, (2016)}, explain that KM requires a culture of trust among the members of an organization to share knowledge.

1.2. Organizational culture

^{Sensuse, Cahyaningsih, and Catur (2015)} sustain that organizational culture reflects as a norm and belief, as a behavioral guide for all members of the organization. Therefore, organizational culture is influenced by the mindset and individual culture established at each level of the organization and becomes a challenge to encourage efficiency. Organizational culture is generated from management to all levels to encourage knowledge sharing and interaction among members of the organization; in fact, organizational culture has some influences on knowledge management through values and behavior reflected in KM.

From a simple perspective, ^{Bowers, Hall, and Srinivasan (2017)} conclude that organizational culture is a set of basic and tacit assumptions shared by a group of people about what the world is and should be. These tacit assumptions determine perceptions, thoughts, feelings and to some extent, their manifest behavior that drives their actions and responses.

Along this line, ^{Sánchez, Carrasco, Danvila, and Sastre (2016)}, sustain that organizational culture has traditionally been considered one of the most important intangible strategies in the development of competitive advantages, assuming that norms of behavior are created from beliefs and expectations, which shape the behaviors of individuals and groups within an organization. Culture can be understood as a resource closely tied to the rest of the company’s resources, as well as a management mechanism that can be a competitive advantage.

However, ^{Klimas (2016)} defines organizational culture as a driving force for competitiveness as it influences intra-organizational development, its effectiveness and financial performance. It is understood as a set of values, beliefs and assumptions and perceptions shared by the members of organizations, which enables flexibility, innovation, effectiveness, organizational development and performance. It is an intangible, organizational and strategic resource, directly related to the overall performance of the organization.

Likewise, ^{Erhardt, Martin-Rios, and Heckscher (2016)} define organizational culture as a complex system of shared values, which guides the actions of the members of an organization. Values such as camaraderie, creativity, performance and efficiency work as the foundation of the organization’s culture, which create an identity and differentiate it from competitors. Fundamental values such as risk-taking and attention to detail constitute collective knowledge (i.e. understanding) within an organization that is rooted in principles, code of conduct, beliefs or philosophy of how the organization operates.

To complement ^{Lee, Raschke, and Louis (2016)}, argue that organizational culture is a complex set of values, norms and symbols that define how a company its conducts business. This culture encourages employees to accept the goals and values of the organization’s leaders while promoting a sense of belonging. Culture emphasizes a human affiliation in a flexible structure, an internal focus on cohesion and morale, and the development of human resources to build team spirit and values the roles, rules and regulations imposed, bringing about clarity, transparency and stability to workers, thus encouraging efficiency, punctuality and proper functioning.

Likewise, ^{Ahmady, Nikooravesh, and Mehrpour (2016)} express that organizational culture can be a powerful resource of common identity, purpose and flexible guidelines. Its effect on people has been so strong that the behavior, feelings, perceptions, and attitudes of the members of an organization can be predicted. To strengthen organizational culture as support to knowledge management, the following should be considered:

Changing the attitude and vision of the authorities towards the role and position of knowledge.

Using tools for employees who perform well, innovative and risky.

Implementing strategic programs for knowledge management.

Building confidence in the organization, so that employees do not feel danger in transferring their work skills to others.

Encouraging knowledge-based emplo­yees to transfer knowledge to others and set up the processes in which the knowledge of rivals could be used.

Strengthening a supportive and friendly environment in the organization.

In addition, ^{Oyemomi, Liu, Neaga, Chen, and Nakpodia (2017)}, sustain that the development of the organizational culture serves several purposes. Firstly, it conveys a sense of identity to the members of the organization. Secondly, it facilitates the generation of commitment. Thirdly, culture improves the stability of the organization. Fourth, culture serves as a sensory device that can guide and shape behavior (^{Valmohammadi and Roshanzamir, 2015}).

On the other hand, ^{Szczepańska-Woszczyna (2015)}, conclude that culture is very important for leading organizations to success; provided that all the staff of the organizations is fully engaged in this matter. Organizational culture is the element that unites employees’ objectives to achieve subsequent levels of excellence while reflecting the image of the organization. Organizational culture can be a favorable element for the development of innovative activities. Values, norms, and beliefs that play a role in creativity and innovation in organizations can support or inhibit creativity and innovation, depending on how they influence the behavior of individuals and groups. In general, leaders also have a powerful source of influence on employees’ work behaviors (^{Hussein, Omar, Noordin, and Ishak, 2016}).

Lastly, ^{Lee, et al. (2016)} asserts that organizational culture influences the way employees think, act and respond to process improvement, and affects the scope of collaboration between employees while improvement work is underway. In addition, it influences the will and behavior of employees in terms of sharing knowledge.

1.3. Knowledge management assessment model

For the research purposes, the knowledge management assessment model of ^{Marulanda et al (2015)} was used, which is defined from an integral and holistic concept and considers the following: it is based on three dimensions, with their respective categories, such as infrastructure, which contains the categories organizational culture, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and knowledge life cycle; Communities of Practice (COP), which contains the categories personal competencies, adaptation, COPs techniques and social relations; and the category intensive use of knowledge, which includes the categories core processes, strategic processes and support processes. This whole set for the purpose of meeting the needs of stakeholders, through the services that can be offered, as can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1 KM Assessment Model 

2.1. Sampling

A survey was applied to the three largest BPO call center companies in the city of Manizales, Colombia, and 312 observations were obtained (within the framework of the concept of statistical convenience and given the difficulties in obtaining responses to surveys). For the structuring of the questionnaire, Likert-type scale questions were asked, which were graded from 1 to 5, where 1 means disagree or not done, 2 means partially done, 3 done at intervals, 4 done regularly and 5 fully done. See annex.

2.1. Data Analysis

Based on the developments by ^{Hair, Anderson, Tatham, and Black (2007)}, a correlation analysis was applied, which involves simultaneously correlating several dependent metric variables and several independent metric variables. Ideal values of correlation results above 0.5.

2.3. Categories and variables assessed

In the case of the findings presented in this paper, the following categories were assessed:

KM Life Cycle: understood as a continuous process that makes it possible for knowledge to be transversal to each and every organizational process. In this sense, the following variables were considered: identifying, generating, retaining, sharing and applying knowledge.

Organizational culture: understood as the set of customs, rites, norms and ways of acting of an organization, which serves as a mediator of the relationship between staff and organizational knowledge, and determines that knowledge belongs to the organization and remains under the control of individuals and groups. In this sense, the following variables were considered: people, narrative and workplace.