Knowledge management in the hospitality industry: A review of empirical research

Knowledge management (KM) has emerged over the last decade to become one of the most debated management concepts, but in the hospitality industry KM has not achieved the same scale of applications and empirical research as in other fields. This paper presents the first state-of-the-art survey of empirical KM research in the hospitality field. Database searches of the KM concept and related topics yielded 2365 hits, of which only 19 empirical articles were identified. The contents of the articles are discussed in juxtaposition with static versus dynamic perspectives on knowledge. The empirical quality of articles is assessed against relevant theory-of-science criteria. Findings reveal that five empirical contributions offer high research quality, and the remaining studies demonstrate that empirical KM research is limited, inconclusive, low on generalization and testability. It is suggested that future research should offer insight into actual learning dynamics to define what domain-specific knowledge means for hospitality management and employees, to investigate how to store real-time contextual knowledge, investigating employees’ versus managers’ knowledge abilities in forecasting business change, and to illuminate how knowledge vision and knowledge activities may be aligned.