  Knowledge is considered an essential resource for organizations. For
organizations to benefit from their possessed knowledge, knowledge needs to be
managed effectively. Despite knowledge sharing and management being viewed as
important by practitioners, organizations fail to benefit from their knowledge,
leading to issues in cooperation and the loss of valuable knowledge with
departing employees. This study aims to identify hindering factors that prevent
individuals from effectively sharing and managing knowledge and understand how
to eliminate these factors. Empirical data were collected through
semi-structured group interviews from 50 individuals working in an
international large IT organization. This study confirms the existence of a gap
between the perceived importance of knowledge management and how little this
importance is reflected in practice. Several hindering factors were identified,
grouped into personal social topics, organizational social topics, technical
topics, environmental topics, and interrelated social and technical topics. The
presented recommendations for mitigating these hindering factors are focused on
improving employees' actions, such as offering training and guidelines to
follow. The findings of this study have implications for organizations in
knowledge-intensive fields, as they can use this knowledge to create knowledge
sharing and management strategies to improve their overall performance.
