Applying Knowledge Management in the Life Insurance Industry Dr. Dhanabhakyam M.1, Anitha V.2, Kavitha S.3 1Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore-46 2PhD Full Time Scholar, Department of Commerce, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore – 46 3M.Phil Full Time Scholar, Department of Commerce, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore – 46 Online published on 29 June, 2013. Abstract In the trend of globalization and coordination of banks, insurance and security enterprises, the life insurance industry has been facing tremendous competitive pressure. Business in the era of knowledge economy has realized that efficiently capturing the knowledge embedded in their organizations and deploying it into operations and services will create an edge over their competitors. Though the issues of knowledge management (KM) have been discussed widely, there is a genuine lack of empirical research for the life insurance sector. This study addresses the research gap via extensive literature review and conducting empirical surveys with an embedded qualitative field study among the life insurance enterprises in Coimbatore. The findings revealed that most of the respondents agreed that KM would improve their job performance in enhancing service quality, saving time and being more effective at work and the opinions from senior management played an important role in having KM into place. Nonetheless, there were a majority of the respondents indicated several obstacles in adopting and implementing KM. We also found that the main KM activities conducted among the respondents were sharing, converting and using knowledge. Finally, managerial suggestions and further research directions are provided. Top Keywords Knowledge Management (KM), Innovation Diffusion, Life Insurance Industry. Top |