Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the perceived importance and actual level of implementation of five preliminary success factors, four knowledge management (KM) strategies and three KM processes towards the performance of the Malaysian telecommunication industry. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was conducted on telecommunication companies based on a convenience sampling technique. Data were analyzed using paired t‐tests and multiple regression analyses. Findings The results show that Malaysian telecommunication organizations view all the KM preliminary success factors, strategies and process as important and critical but fall short of implementation. K Audit, K Map, leadership, measurement, construction and embodiment are the variables that have the largest gap between perceived importance and actual implementation. For perceived importance, culture is the only important variable associated with organizational performance whereas for actual implementation, both business strategy and construction process are found to be significantly associated with organizational performance. Research limitations/implications This paper was conducted in only one industry in Malaysia. Furthermore, it focuses on KM implementation rather than on learning and knowledge utilization. This paper provides a framework for developing an instrument for assessing the use of preliminary elements in the Malaysian telecommunication industry. Telecommunication organizations have to overcome problems identified and enhance their implementation level in order to achieve better organizational performance. Originality/value This paper has extended knowledge in KM, especially concerning implementation issues at the beginning stage of KM. Moreover, it is among the first empirical work to specifically examine preliminary success factors, processes and strategies that affect the preliminary implementation of KM.
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