Sharing knowledge as collective intelligence approach to improve the IT department´s operation at commercial banking

This research reviews the knowledge management (KM) usage and how the internal personnel collective working provides benefits, or not, to commercial banking information technology departments (IT) in Mexico. Alongside the assessment, the research shows the principal concerns in regards KM for IT to design an international point of view strategy with local market overview in order to gain value for its IT operation. The research follows a qualitative and quantitative approach, through questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with IT executives and propose a structural equation model to measure the main manifest activities the KM and collective intelligence address under the banks perspective. Mexican banks has different IT operational philosophy based in their country´s head quarter origin: European, North American or Mexican, which also change the value perception they must obtain form their IT departments; most of them agreed the main reason to move forward to a KM policy is to increase value for their internal customers. The originality of the paper regards the way it addresses simultaneously knowledge management and collective intelligence as related concepts to improve IT operation.