Fattah Nazem and Anahita Madankar
universities, it should be first measured through a valid instrument. Consequently, necessary managerial actions should be taken.
Taking knowledge management variable as a guarantee to survive and a competitive advantage for universities, and the lack of a valid measurement tool for knowledge management, and its components at universities were the main motives of the present research. We aimed at designing a valid instrument that identifies the constructs which form the knowledge management, measures the variable of knowledge management in each of the underlying dimensions, and finds a way to strengthen the knowledge management at universities in e‐Government portals.
In this study, the research questions are as follows:
• What are the indexes which construct the knowledge management at universities?
• What items are included in each index?
• Which of these indexes has greater contribution to forming the knowledge management?
In other words, the researchers try to find the indexes which construct the knowledge management, investigate which index has the most important role in forming knowledge management at universities, and find a valid instrument through which e‐Governments can monitor and strengthen knowledge management at universities.
2. Method of the study
The population of the study includes all the staff members working in 420 branches and educational centers in 14 administrative areas of Islamic Azad University, Iran.
2 2 z σ
In order to estimate the least volume of the sample, n = formula was used. The basis in the
2 d formula was the variance of the knowledge management calculated in other research studies. Regarding the minimum sample required for the staff’ s group which was estimated at 1906 people, the same number of questionnaires of knowledge management was administered to the members of staff in 86 branches and educational centers. In order to select the research sample, two methods of stratified and cluster random sampling were used.
To assess knowledge management, Sallis and Jones’ s( 2002) knowledge management questionnaire was applied. This questionnaire consists of 42 items which are answered by choosing the alternatives of“ strongly agree = 5”,“ agree = 4”,“ neutral = 3”,“ disagree = 2”, and“ strongly disagree = 1”. The questionnaire includes 10 subscales of leadership and management( Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), team work and learning communities( Items 7, 8, 9, and 10), sharing knowledge( Items 11, 12, and 13), knowledge creation( Items 14, 15, and 16), digital sophistication( Items 17, 18, 19, and 20), vision and mission( Items 21, 22, and 23), strategy( Items 24, 25, and 27), organizational culture( Items 28, 29, 30, 31, and 32), intellectual capital( Items 33, 34, 35, and 36), and learning organization( Items 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, and 42). The obtained Cronbach’ s Alpha was 0.97.
The researchers have used factor analysis and principal components analysis, using a varimax rotation in order to identify the underlying constructs of knowledge management.
3. Findings of the study
The preliminary analysis of different indexes of central tendency, variability, and the distribution of the staff’ s scores obtained from the questionnaire of knowledge management, and its 10 components show that the distribution of the staff’ s scores in the given variables have tendency toward normality.
To answer the research questions, factor analysis procedure was applied. The first step in factor analysis process which is also its first assumption is checking the missing data. In this step, the subjects with the following numbers were eliminated from the sample: 38, 71, 185, 231, 240, 252, 438, 467, 478, 555, 606, 628, 664, 681, 758, 885, 895, 927, 1023, 1054, 1132, 1421, 1468, 1507, and 1705. They included 25 persons altogether who were eliminated from statistical analysis so that the factor analysis assumption under the heading of at least missing( 0.02) could be observed in each subject. Hence, in this research no item has been
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