Abstract
Background: South African academic libraries are facing radical changes due to a paradigm
shift in their parent universities associated with the digital age linked to the Fourth Industrial
Revolution (4IR). The rationale for this study was to enable library management, employees
and change leaders of libraries to understand that knowledge management (KM) is a potential
solution for managing change in academic libraries in this digital age.
Objectives: The central argument of this research is that KM as a management discipline is a
solution to manage change in the academic libraries in the digital age. The present research
gap is the role of KM as a change enabler in academic libraries. The purpose of this study was
to explore the potential of KM as a change enabler in the academic libraries in the digital age.
Method: This study applied the exploratory method to gather more empirical evidence on KM
as a potential solution in managing change in the library. Interview and questionnaire were
used as data collection methods after purposively selecting the respondents from the
population in a non-probability sampling technique. The reliability of the questionnaire was
tested that showed a high Cronbach’s alpha score.
Results: Amongst other results, the empirical evidence shows that employees resist change
when their comfort zone is threatened; what they know is becoming threatened because the
new initiative or change tends not to be aligned with their current knowledge and skills. Lack
of knowing what is going to happen after change may lead to resistance; then it proves and
validates that KM could be a potential solution.
Conclusion: This study has identified a positive relationship between KM and management of
change in the academic libraries. The libraries should ensure that their knowledge gets
managed so that it can be easily and timely shared and disseminated to the decision makers
during change