## 3 Materials and Methods  
We used several research and statistical methods to achieve the goal of this paper. We primarily used the analysis of current scientific research publications and confronted individual expert opinions on the issue with their own conclusions. In order to obtain and process research data, we mainly used questionnaire surveys conducted in 2014-2018. The respondents of the survey were employees primarily responsible for human resources management and development in companies operating in Slovakia. A questionnaire with 90 questions related to human resources management was used as a tool to examine the current state of implementation of digital technologies in order to increase knowledge sharing in the enterprise. However, for the purpose of this paper, we only processed answers to questions related to knowledge sharing in the company within the context of new IT tools used. The number of respondents oscillated around 750 each year, with the rate of correctly completed questionnaires ranging from 65% to 75%. Before the actual phase of data acquisition, we set two stratification criteria based on which we subsequently specified a basic set of potential respondents. The first criterion was the region of the enterprise operation within Slovakia under the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) system. Specifically, Slovakia was divided into the NUTS 2 category (Bratislava region, western Slovakia, central Slovakia, eastern Slovakia), whereas the subsequent structural composition of the research sample was based on data from the Statistical Office (SU) of the Slovak Republic (SR). The second stratification criterion was the number of employees in the enterprises under investigation. The lower limit was set at 50 employees. The main purpose of establishing this stratification criterion was to primarily address to medium-sized enterprises, where we assumed, on the one hand, the existence of a formalized department and agenda for the area of human resources management and, on the other hand, given the number of employees, we predicted an increase in problems in the area of effective knowledge sharing for all employees. Based on data from the Statistical Office (SU) of SR for the period under review, it can be stated that the number of enterprises with 50 or more employees in individual regions oscillated around the same value. The specific regional structure of enterprises with more than 50 employees in the observed years is shown in Table 1.  
The determination of the optimal research sample size from the population set out in Table 1 was performed at the 95% confidence level and confidence interval H = \(\pm\)0.10. The size structure of a sufficient research sample, as well as the real size of the research sample in the analyzed years for individual regions of Slovakia, is shown in the Table 2.  
Companies from all sectors of economy were represented in the research each year (Table 3), whereas the research results did not show any significant differences at cross-sector comparison. For this reason, the research results were evaluated cumulatively, i.e., regardless of the sectors that companies operate in. In order to evaluate the obtained data, we firstly used the methods of descriptive statistics, where we found the percentage of individual analyzed indicators. Subsequently, we statistically processed and evaluated the observed values through the analysis of basic indices (changes in values from the first year) and chain indices (changes in values monitored from the previous year) in order to identify the development trends of individual indicators over time. Finally, we verified the established hypotheses by means of a chi-square comparative analysis. In accordance with the objectives of the paper, we formulated two research questions, on the basis of which we set up two hypotheses. * RQ1: To what extent is knowledge shared in organizations operating in Slovakia? * RQ2: To what extent are knowledge databases used in the conditions of Slovak organizations?