Maturity mapping for continuous improvement: A case study of a revenue services institution

Background: Continuous improvement is a topic that organisations sometimes avoid since it identifies areas lacking business excellence. Continuous improvement is possible in organisations that take a holistic approach to managing knowledge, which gives them the ability to continue to innovate and sustain their value creation to their stakeholders. Aim: The levels of knowledge management maturity in the Tax Audit Business Unit of a revenue services institution had to be identified in order to provide guidance on how to improve and contribute to future information and communication technology (ICT) strategy planning. Setting: The ICT strategy planning process at the revenue services institution identified a gap in how it managed information and knowledge. This indicated a discrepancy in knowledge management (KM) maturity. Method: A deductive approach was followed, motivated by analysis of tested and well-researched theories to create a theoretical framework. This was then tested against empirical research conducted in a specific business unit. Descriptive statistics in the form of frequencies, proportions, and means were obtained from the data, to describe the patterns and trends in the data set. Results: The key findings confirm that generally the value of KM is well regarded. Barriers exist and levels of consensus generally drop as the levels progress towards the highest KM maturity level, mostly lacking in terms of continuous improvement. Conclusion: The conceptual KM framework developed from this study will give revenue services institutions insights on how to innovate and sustain their value creation to their stakeholders. The desired activities for adoption of the framework will help achieve continuous improvement of a revenue services institution