AN EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS FOR MEASURING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT COMPONENT CONSTRUCT IN MALAYSIAN PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This research intended to establish a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the knowledge
management component (KMC) through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), which consists of eight
construct including work coordination, communication, interaction information system, knowledge
sharing, management information system functionality, intranet quality, information system integration
and network capability. The questionnaire used in this research was adapted from Rodriguez and
Edwards (2014) by using the Likert scale from 1 to 5. There were 107 questionnaires were collected to
do the EFA by using principal axis factoring (PAF) as extraction and direct oblimin as rotation. KaiserMeyer-Oklin (KMO) and Bartlett test of sphericity was also reported as well as Cronbach’s Alpha to
test the reliability for the remaining items. The results show that the factor loading of every item in the
constructs is higher than 0.6, meanwhile, the Bartlett test of sphericity was highly significant (p=.000).
Furthermore, the KMO for sampling adequacy was excellent (0.88) which indicated that the sample
size of this research is adequate. Besides, value of Cronbach’s Alpha for all 45 items also higher than
the rule of thumb 0.7, hence, show that these items are all reliable. Thus, from the validity and reliability
test, the instrument in this research has been affirmed that it is stable and consistent across the sample.
Moreover, this research was applied to the public higher education (PHE) in Malaysia. This research
targeted risk committees, internal auditors and top managements as they were regarded as the most
knowledgeable and more appropriate to provide reliable information on various aspects in an
organization. Lastly, this research contributes to the measurement of the KMC, particularly in the PHE.
Besides, the results from EFA extracts eight factors of KMC, which measured by 45 items revealed that
those items are applicable in this research.