Does Organizational Culture Supports Knowledge Creation? An Overview

Abstract

Several studies have addressed the processes of knowledge creation as a continuous process by which individuals and groups within and between companies share tacit and explicit knowledge; the most important aspect in higher education is the dynamic capability to continuously create new knowledge. Various perspectives of academic staff toward knowledge creation plays an important role in creating new knowledge; however, there is a lack of common comprehension concept of the culture related to knowledge creation perspective, especially in Iran universities. Due to the current Iran educational ecosystem, transmission of knowledge within the organizational is complex, thus the exchanging of knowledge among staff within the organization is less dynamic and vigorous as expected. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to study the perception of academic staff towards organizational culture to support knowledge creation at Iran universities. About 500 academic staff were randomly selected from government universities, and yielded a response rate of 76.2% (381 respondents). Data were analyzed using SPSS to achieve the objectives; thus, descriptive statistics is used to analyze the characteristics of academic staff and their perception on knowledge creation. The findings showed that staff‟s backgrounds have no influence on their perception about organizational culture in support of knowledge creation; however, organizational culture played an important role in knowledge creation at university level. This outcome carries values to the university authorities to create and enhance the culture of knowledge creation within and between the organizations.