The Relationship between Organizational Culture and Knowledge Management Processes. A Case Study: The Roads and Urban Development Organization of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province

Abstract

With the beginning of the knowledge era, the Organizations' knowledge assets have been considered widely as a main key for the ability to create and maintain the competitive advantage and continuous growth. The suitable organizational culture can be very important for knowledge management. Therefore in line with the primary conduct of knowledge management the organizations need to recognize and obtain information on the dominant culture in their enterprise and the degree of organizational culture compatibility with knowledge management activities. The main objective of the research his to analyze the relationship between organizational culture and knowledge management processes. This research was performed in the form of
organizational culture and knowledge management literature, which resulted in obtaining a conceptual model of the research. In this organizational culture research, the competitive values framework model (the clan culture, the adhocracy culture, the market culture, and the hierarchical culture) was used and in knowledge management processes, the knowledge management cycle
(knowledge creation, knowledge capture, knowledge organization, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination, and knowledge application) was used. This research is descriptive-survey in objective, application, and nature respects. The statistical community of this research was the official employee of The Roads and Urban Development Organization in Chaparrals and Bakhtiari Province in 2010-2011. The data gathering instrument was questionnaire. To measure the organizational culture and knowledge management processes the assessment instrument for organizational culture of Cameron and Quinn(2006) and the knowledge management assessment instrument of Lawson (2003) were used respectively, and their validity was confirmed by Cronbach's Alpha with 0.886 and 0.889 ratios respectively, and the number of statistical sample was determined 65 people. The descriptive tests, One-sample t-test, Friedman, and Pearson's correlation tests were usedto analyze the data and the examination of the hypothesis. The research findings say that its hypotheses were confirmed and the relation between the organizational culture and knowledge managementprocesses is meaningful. The amount of knowledge creation, knowledge capture, knowledge storage, and knowledge dissemination processes were average and the knowledge organization and knowledge application processes were below the average. The dominant culture in the organization is hierarchical but the corresponding organizational culture with the knowledge management processes is the adhocracy culture; therefore, the successful performance of knowledge management programs depends on the reinforcement of knowledge management processes and emphasizes the adhocracy culture in the organization.