Knowledge Management System Use as A Tool to Enhance and Support Professional and Organisational Cognitive Engagement in Higher Level Institution

Background - Employee job performance has been linked to other organisational elements, and engagement has been found to be a crucial factor in completing work and tying other organisational aspects to employee job performance (Gruman & Saks, 2011; Rich et al., 2010). In addition, stories in the popular press have pointed out that engaged employees are critical to a company's competitive advantage, but disengaged employees lose US businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity (Bates, 2004). As a result, what firms can do to encourage employee motivation has become a perennial topic in academic and practitioner literature. Scholars has highlighted that KMS may give light to professional and cognitive engagement (henceforth referred as PCE) Purpose - Professional staffs have yet to delve into the knowledge management system by practicing software development in order to make better decisions. Professionals face difficulties due to a lack of a knowledge management system in their own organization, which affects their job performance. Therefore, not enough constructs on Professional and Cognitive Engagement. Design/Methodology/Approach - Primary data for this study was acquired using inquiry and investigation method. The method deployed in this research is qualitative method which also known for action research method. There are two different theories have been selected for this research where the usage of it is similar to the purpose of this thesis which are social cognitive and cognitive behavioural theory. Basically, the data collection technique used is semi-structured interviews among the university professional staffs. A thematic analysis method will be used by using NVivo tools. Findings/Expected Contribution - This research observed two streams in the few studies that do focus on intermediaries. The first group of studies comprises those that do not link intermediaries to individual outcomes. The second stream is made up of research that do identify this relationship, but it focuses on the learning or knowledge attainment that is facilitated by the usage of KMS. Research Limitations - Cognitive engagement relates to the need of the employees to be acutely aware of and aligned with the knowledge management system and know what they need to deliver the optimal return on their work efforts to improvise the job performance. Originality/Value - The study would be significant to the education sector in Malaysia especially the professional staffs in higher learning institutions where more importance can be shown on cognitive engagement for them to improvise their job performance. The research gap predicted in this study is that there are many studies on the knowledge management system, but so far there has been no study focused on the cognitive engagement aligned with knowledge management system among professional staffs in higher learning institutions. Keywords- Knowledge Management System (KMS), Engagement, Professional and Cognitive Engagement & Job Performance