Investigating the mutual relationship between knowledge management components and psychological empowerment of employees in iranian central oil fields company

پژوهش نامه مدیریت تحول

Article 7, Volume 11, Spring & summer 2019 - Serial Number 21, September 2019, Pages 153-180   

Document Type: Articles

DOI: 10.22067/pmt.v11i1.69617

Authors

Sirous Amirghodsi^* ; Ali Bonyadi Naieni

University of Science and Technology

Abstract

1- INTRODUCTION
Todays, fast-changing environment, companies are required to acquire and update knowledge in order to gain competitive advantage. Knowledge enables organizations to anticipate the nature and commercial potential of changes. the ability to acquire, organize and disseminate knowledge helps organizations to improve decision making, cost effectiveness, customer satisfaction and cost control. therefore, successful companies in the world have focused on organizational knowledge management as a necessary requirement and a priority agenda for being a great leader in competitiveness arena. knowledge management (KM) can be defined as a strategic and systematic approach to value what the organization knows. on the other hand, the most important and valuable asset of an organization is human resource, and the role of skilled and efficient human resources in achieving organizational goals is obvious and indisputable. accordingly, human resource empowerment can prepare and success organizations in the face of today’s fast-changing environment. the use of KM in organizations can affect the psychological empowerment of employees.
 
 
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Knowledge Management
KM is defined as a structured process including goals, identification, acquisition, development, dissemination, application, measuring and evaluation of organizational knowledge. managers try to extract accumulated knowledge in the minds of organizational members through the knowledge management, and share it among all people. in this case, the knowledge stored in the system becomes a permanent usable resource and provides a competitive advantage for the organization.
Psychological empowerment
Psychological empowerment refers to a set of mental states which is needed to perform tasks and control actions, and under these conditions, the experts focus mainly is on the methods of management and control of employees at different levels. on the other hand, the psychological dimension relies on employee experiences in the workplace. according to the psychological dimension, empowerment refers to employee's individual beliefs towards organizational roles.
3- METHODOLOGY
 This study is considered as a descriptive-survey research in terms of data collection. Research variables include: knowledge management components (knowledge creation, capture, refinement, dissemination, application) and psychological empowerment of employees. The population of the study includes the experts of Iranian Central Oil fields company. applying theoretical saturation method 15 experts asked to answer the questions. dematel questionnaire has been used for gathering the information.
4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION
 The order of importance of knowledge management components in terms of interaction with other components is as follows: knowledge application, knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination, knowledge refinement, knowledge capture and empowerment. on the other hand, the independent components include empowerment, knowledge application and knowledge capture and knowledge dissemination. dependent components also include knowledge creation and knowledge refinement. Therefore, it should be focused on independent variables, including empowerment, knowledge application, knowledge capture and knowledge dissemination to improve the variables of knowledge creation and knowledge refinement. Among the components of KM, the component of knowledge application has a significant impact on the other three components, including, knowledge creation, knowledge refinement, and knowledge dissemination. also, knowledge creation has a significant impact on knowledge dissemination, knowledge application and knowledge refinement. the component of knowledge capture has impact on knowledge dissemination and knowledge refinement. the component of knowledge refinement is the most dependent component and in the level of 70% is affected by knowledge creation, knowledge application, knowledge capture, and knowledge dissemination. In this regard, it is clear that knowledge refinement is meaningless without knowledge creation in the organization. While comparing the cause and effect intensity of the psychological empowerment variable with KM components, because none of the affected values of empowerment from components of KM is in the upper limit domain, generally it can be suggested that empowerment is an effective variable, rather than being affected. given what was said, it can be concluded that empowerment can strengthen KM. also, it can be concluded that among the components of KM, the component of knowledge dissemination has the most constructive interaction with other components, because this component is affected by three components of knowledge creation, knowledge application and knowledge capture and it affects the component of knowledge refinement.
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
 Encouraging and providing the necessary rewards to employees who contribute to the KM process should be prioritized and given special attention. By introducing top employees in the field of producing applied knowledge and appreciating them at different time intervals, human resources managers can encourage other employees to collaborate in the KM process.  to improve the component of knowledge capture, the template of the managers themselves as an important part of the culturalize as well as the encouragement of successful people in the field of knowledge capture can be considered. In fact, the creation and display of a suitable behavior pattern, and the differentiation and encouragement of individuals having behavior consistent with the objectives of KM and organization, is crucial in the repetition and improvement of the components of KM, and specially knowledge capture. necessary training should be given to supervisors to enable them give adequate information to their subordinates to participate in decision making, support new and appropriate ideas and rely on the outcomes of work, as many subordinate decisions and ideas may be preferred to their opinions. Also, low-level employees should be trained to take the appropriate decisions in critical situations with full confidence in their work and by provoking a sense of ability.
 

Keywords

knowledge management; Psychological empowerment; Dematel method; Oil industry

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