Fattah Nazem and Anahita Madankar
1998; Stewart 1997). Moreover, Eftekharzadeh( 2008) states that effective and efficient knowledge management is a predictor for organizations remaining competitive over time. Since the success of an organization lies more in its intellectual capabilities than its physical assets, the capacity to leverage knowledge is fast becoming a critical advantage. Yet, determining the value of an organization is becoming increasingly complex.
In their book entitled“ Knowledge management in education”, Sallis & Jones( 2002) offer a useful knowledge management self‐assessment checklist with scoring elements such as:
• Vision and mission: It refers to having vision as a knowledge‐based organization and sharing it with the stakeholders and the mission as the knowledge creator and translating it into practical strategies.
• Strategy: It refers to developing modeled scenarios and applying them in the management.
• Organizational culture: It refers to the different dimensions of culture including the creating, centralizing, sharing, and recognizing organizational culture as a key competence.
• Intellectual capital: It includes recognizing the value of intellectual assets and codifying its tacit knowledge.
• Learning organization: Under learning organization, organization should create continuous learning, define skills to create new knowledge, recognize EQ and its influences encourage creative thinking, and promote action learning both for individuals and teams.
• Leadership and management: In leadership and management, organizations are required to have seniormanagement support, have knowledge leaders and managers with appropriate leadership styles, and develop strategies for promoting middle‐managers.
• Teamwork and learning communities: Under teamwork and learning communities, organization should encourage learning communities and knowledge teams, establish trust, and recognize the need for intellectual autonomy.
• Sharing knowledge: It signifies that organizations ought to collect, record major organization events, and share new information, and understand competitors’ knowledge management system.
• Knowledge creation: It requires the organizations to recognize new knowledge, those known as experts, and turn it into service.
• Digital sophistication for the organization: In terms of digital sophistication, organizations are to develop technologies among its employees by clear technological architecture, enhancing its knowledge, and devising virtual collaborative systems and / or communities( pp. 125‐129).
In theory, knowledge management research is still in its infancy with related literature being primarily focused on the importance of knowledge, the rise of the knowledge worker, and the emergence of knowledge‐based organizations. In practice, Gartner Group( Harris, 2005) reported that 95 % of the 500 fortune organizations have initiated enterprise‐wide knowledge‐based projects. While organizations have recognized that employee knowledge represents a highly valued, intangible, and strategic asset( Foote et al., 2001), the successful management of this knowledge has also become one of its greatest challenges( Hinds & Pfeffer, 2003; Nonaka, et al., 2001). Henard and McFadyen( 2008) indicate that the knowledge management process is increasingly seen as a key to organizational creativity and innovation. Knowledge management initiates within the evolving global business environment, necessitates that organizations shift from a rigid standardized competitive approach, to a more flexible mobilization of human resources located both inside and outside the company( Swart & Kinnie, 2003). In their study, Stevens et al.( 2010) found out that knowledge management has the potential to develop strategic advantage and enhance the performance of an organization in terms of productivity and business process efficiency. For this reason, organizations are contributing significant resources to knowledge management; investing in information location and implementing knowledge management processes and systems.
Higher education system is one of the most important and complicated products of human achievements. In addition, universities are social systems which have been known as the centers of knowledge and information as well as the thinking base for leading societies. In many countries, universities are centrally run and their budgets are provided by the governments. Therefore, the government directly interferes in the universities ' affaires. In today’ s complex, competitive world, knowledge management is considered as a competitive advantage for universities in e‐Government system. Therefore, in order to realize knowledge management at
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