Strategic Management of Organizational Knowledge
Year:2021 | Volume: | Issue: |Papers Count:7

Since the global COVID-19 outbreak and complete lockdown, teleworking seems the best option for organizations to sustain their business and get over this situation. Knowledge management is an important activity that helps organizations attain an excellent advantage, succeed in business, and improve performance. Teleworking and lack of face-to-face conversation and communication, a critical factor in knowledge management, can influence the knowledge management process. In the present study, we intend to better understand the relationship between teleworking and the knowledge management process. A deductive approach and positivist philosophy are utilized to achieve the study’ s primary purpose. A quantitative approach is applied because this study refers to a causal relationship among variables. The statistical population is chosen to be the employees of the Government Trading Corporation of Iran who, due to the role of this company in supplying the basic commodities of the country, were teleworking during the quarantine period. The required sample size is estimated to be 246 people using G*POWER software. After confirming the validity and reliability of the questionnaire using confirmatory factor analysis, the average variance extracted (AVE), the composite reliability (CR), rho_A, and Cronbach's alpha, 295 samples are collected, which is more than the minimum required sample size. The collected data is analyzed by smart-pls software and the structural equation modeling method. Findings show that there is a significant direct relationship between teleworking and the knowledge management process. Only the components related to maintaining the balance between work and life and willingness to continue teleworking when the crisis is over, are lower than other components which are addressed in the practical recommendation. This model is designed to help the decision-makers and managers improve management skills and increase the performance of the knowledge management process while using teleworking during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Today, knowledgeable human resources have the greatest role in the success of knowledge-based organizations. Knowledge sharing as one of the most effective components of achieving competitive advantage in these organizations can be a threat to their human resources; a threat that can bring various risks to the organization. This study investigates the undesirable effects of the knowledge sharing process on the level of knowledge staff separation and the risks created. The research hypotheses have been developed from the literature and tested on the data collected through a survey on an IT firm. In this research, a descriptive-applied research model has been utilized and its survey method and its statistical society are employees of a knowledge-based organization. The data has been collected using a designed questionnaire and expert opinion, and the reliability and validity of the extracted data have been evaluated by Cronbach's alpha, Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin, Bartlett tests, and the research hypotheses have been investigated using t-test, Chi-Square and Friedman tests. The results show that the negative effects of the knowledge sharing process on the separation of knowledge employees from the organization under study have a real nature and can play an effective role in their separation from the organization. This issue leads to the creation of risks in the organization, the most important of which to mention, are reduced productivity and increased costs of the organization.

The movement towards knowledge-based management and administration in today's world and achieving competitive excellence in organizations has made knowledge sharing an important issue. In other words, the lack of knowledge sharing in the organization leads to inefficiency in organizational knowledge management. The purpose of this study is to explain and localize the effective cultural components in knowledge sharing in order to provide solutions for knowledge sharing improvement. The present study seeks to extract the cultural components effective in knowledge sharing by using structural equation modeling. For this purpose, by reviewing the research literature, effective cultural components in knowledge sharing in the form of 8 components are identified. Then, based on the identified components, a researcher-made questionnaire is designed in the form of 36 items. The statistical population of this study includes all the officials of a government organization comprising of 75 personnel, utilizing the counting method due to the limitation of the population. The research method of this descriptive-survey research using structural equation modeling with Smart Pls software and measurement tool is a five-choice questionnaire based on Likert scale. Cronbach's alpha and combined reliability (CR) are used to evaluate the reliability of the data collection tool, whilst in addition to face validity, the AVE tool is used to evaluate the validity. The results of the analysis of the research findings show that among the identified cultural components, the components of trust, organizational communication, commitment, participation and cooperation and teamwork, reward and encouragement and support have the most positive impact in descending order on the employee knowledge sharing. of course, three other cultural components (leadership and learning and enrichment) which are certainly influential in knowledge sharing have not become significant in this study.

The trend of increasing importance and impact of knowledge in defense organizations is undeniable. In this regard, in order to manage knowledge and its acquisition and creation in defense organizations, it is necessary to pay full and comprehensive attention to the issue of knowledge social computing. Knowledge social computing is a branch of knowledge management literature that is a kind of development of intellectual capital, software and hardware that is used with the necessary conditions to exchange or combine a concept or category. The purpose of this study is to design a pattern of knowledge social computing in the defense organizations of the Islamic Republic of Iran based on the values of the school of pure Islam, which extracts key and important points. Relevant codes have been extracted through the study of sources such as the Holy Quran, hadiths, Islamic texts and the orders of the Imams of the Islamic Revolution, from the perspective of beneficial science and by reviewing interviews with the defense industry experts. The research approach is a mixed method with a partially mixed sequential dominant status design. In this research, three methods of "domain review-Grounded theory-survey" have been used. First, qualitative and then quantitative data have been collected and analyzed. In the qualitative phase, first the internal and external sources related to the domain review method have been extracted and then while reviewing the relevant archival sources, an interview has been conducted with defense experts and then using the qualitative method of the Grounded Theory, 298 indicators, 32 concepts, 14 components and 8 dimensions have been extracted. In the quantitative phase, a questionnaire has been used to collect data, and the seven-point Likert scale has been used for assessment. To confirm the components of the framework and explain their relationships, the survey method has been used. The results show that the two dimensions of power and scientific independence and indigenous facilities and capacities are the most related ones to the social computing of knowledge in defense organizations. One of the important results of this research is the essential role of knowledge social computing, which can document most of the knowledge assets of defense organizations that are produced by individuals during the work processes, and the process of absorbing, acquiring and creating knowledge to the point of scientific demarcation.

Today, the focus on organizational knowledge management as one of the strategic and key areas of organizational improvement and excellence is growing. The special place of knowledge management in standards and models of organizational improvement and excellence has changed in the past few years and it is now evaluated as one of the main business areas of the organization. This change is quite noticeable and significant in the new version of the European Quality Management Foundation (EFQM) organizational excellence model, published in 2020. On the other hand, applying a comprehensive and international model in order to promote and improve organizational knowledge management is one of the issues and challenges ahead of the organizations. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of improving knowledge management deployment as one of the main components of organizational value chain and its final impact on strategic and operational performance of the organization, using the new model of excellence edition 2020. The statistical population of the present study is over 90 companies and institutes affiliated to the Executive Headquarters of Imam Khomeini’ s Command Organization, with the experience in participating in the process of organizational excellence evaluation. A number of 67 expert questionnaires were sent and completed. To analyze the data, the structural equation modeling approach with partial least squares method and Smart PLS software was used. The results show that the new model of organizational excellence is a good framework for improving the establishment of knowledge management, in terms of deepening the issue of knowledge management, especially from the aspects of organizational culture, knowledge-based leadership and knowledge interaction with the key stakeholders and, ultimately leads to improved strategic and operational performance.

Knowledge management (KM) creates a collaborative environment that contributes to the improvements in the supply chain. It guarantees the access of members to external knowledge and the overall supply chain improvement in the competitive environment. The steel industry is considered as the second ‘ key’ and ‘ strategic’ industry after the oil and petrochemical industry in Iran. Implementing knowledge management in supply chains causes many costs due to some challenges. This study aims at selecting and ranking the KM challenges and solutions in order to apply them for improvement in the supply chain overall performance. First, the experts are asked to name and shortlist the challenges and solutions for the supply chain KM. The mentioned experts include 14 KM departments managers in the steel industry supply chain (Foolad Mobarakeh Complex, Ghaltaksazan Sepahan, Iran National Copper Company, Iran National Steel Company, Iran Alloy Steel Company and Isfahan Alloy Steel Company), KM consultants and KM professors. In order to identify the internal relationships among variables, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory-DEMATEL is adopted. Afterwards, best-worst method (BWM) is utilized for weighting the challenges. Finally, complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) is used to rank the solutions to handle challenges. Matlab and Excel are used to analyze the results which are also verified in the steel industry supply chain. The findings indicated that lack of leaders’ commitment towards KM, having a system of encouragement and reprimand for knowledge sharing and differences in the interests, values and culture of supply chain members are the most important challenges. Positive leadership towards KM, setting up incentives and reward systems for KM and strengthening the culture of cooperation in the chain are the highest rank solutions for removing the challenges or reducing their negative impacts.