Why do people seek knowledge? Tracing factors that affect knowledge seeking intention

Suchitra Veeravalli is pursuing PhD at IIT Madras in the area of Knowledge Management. Her interests lie in understanding knowledge seeking behaviors of individuals. She holds a master’s degree in Information Technology from Clarkson University, USA and is currently VP, Administration at Gyan Data Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India. She also leads the data science training company, GITAA Pvt. Ltd. Her previous positions include Co-founder, Syseng LLC, Lubbock, Texas, and Senior Analyst at the Office of Research Services, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.

Vijayalakshmi Venkatraman is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in the broad area of Organizational Behavior and Human Development. Her current teaching and research themes of interest include creativity and innovation capability of firms, knowledge management, the learning organization, unlearning; positive organizational behavior (spirituality in work, finding meaning, strength-based approach, holistic development of leaders); workplace emotions (emotional contagion, emotional social competence); cross-cultural management; teaching, learning and education (holistic education, contemporary teaching and learning beliefs and practices); women empowerment and entrepreneurship, among others.

Manoj Hariharan is responsible for the Knowledge Management module in the division RBEI of the BOSCH Group. In this endeavor, he presents a holistic picture of the elaborate set of KM methods and tools available at Bosch and promotes their adoption within the Business Units of RBEI. Collaboration, serendipitous knowledge discovery, ease of use and continuous improvement have been the core of the KM work he carries out in RBEI. He has over 16 years of professional experience. He is a member of the CII National Committee for KM and is an active member of the K-Community, Bangalore Chapter. Manoj was conferred with Knowledge Management Leadership Award at the Global KM Congress in June 2014. His paper titled “Behavioural Knowledge Management - Origin and Practices at Bosch” was published in KMSG15 conference edition of GLOBE magazine. He is passionate about behavioural economics and organization development.