Examining the relationships between organizational culture, knowledge management and environmental responsiveness capability
| Date | 06 May 2014 |
| Published date | 06 May 2014 |
| Pages | 228-248 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/VINE-07-2012-0026 |
| Author | Peyman Akhavan,Mohamad Ebrahim Sanjaghi,Jalal Rezaeenour,Hamed Ojaghi |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,Knowledge management systems |
Examining the relationships
between organizational culture,
knowledge management and
environmental responsiveness
capability
Peyman Akhavan and Mohamad Ebrahim Sanjaghi
Department of Management, Malek Ashtar University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran
Jalal Rezaeenour
Faculty of Technology and Engineering, University of Qom, Qom, Iran,
and
Hamed Ojaghi
Department of Management, Malek Ashtar University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Purpose – The main aim of this paper is to study the effects of organizational culture on
environmental responsiveness capability (ERC), both directly and through the mediation of
knowledge management (KM) in selected Iranian Industrial Research Organizations (IIRO).
Furthermore, the effects of four types of organizational culture on ERC and KM in the target
population are compared.
Design/methodology/approach – Relationships between the ERC, KM and organizational culture
are considered using survey data through the structural equation modelling approach. Five-point Likert
questionnaire has been used as a tool for measuring variables. The authors sample includes 276
members of 13 selected target organizations whose names are not mentioned due to prior agreement.
Findings – Results show that organizational culture has a positive and signicant relationship
with ERC, both directly and indirectly through the mediation of KM. Additionally, compared with
other types of organizational cultures, innovativeness culture has the highest correlation with ERC,
both directly and through KM as a mediating variable. Furthermore, cooperativeness culture has a
direct signicant relationship with ERC, whereas consistency and effectiveness cultures indirectly
have signicant and positive relationships with ERC through KM. Therefore, results of this
research provide appropriate evidence that ERC can be affected directly by innovativeness culture
and KM.
Originality/value – The advantage of this paper compared to other related research is to study on
ERC based on cultural and knowledge-related variables. Hence, it can extend the literature of ERC, and
it can be useful for the managers who are dealing with industrial research company.
Keywords Environmental responsiveness capability, Organizational culture, Knowledge
management, Iran
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0305-5728.htm
VINE
44,2
228
Received 14 July 2012
Revised 12 February 2014
Accepted 26 February 2014
VINE: The journal of information
and knowledge management systems
Vol. 44 No. 2, 2014
pp. 228-248
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0305-5728
DOI 10.1108/VINE-07-2012-0026
1. Introduction
The increasing pace of globalization, competitive rivalry, customer demand shift and
rapid technological advancements creates an environment in which sustained
competitive advantage is difcult, if not impossible, to achieve (Bhatt et al., 2010).
Furthermore, the diversity and complexity of incidents and events which take place
outside of the organizations and are usually accompanied by other uncertainties make
prediction of the future trends even more difcult. Under these conditions, having high
sensitivity and the ability to timely and quickly respond to market changes are vital
necessities (Hurley and Hult, 1998;Wang, 2009) and key success factors (Bhatt et al.,
2010;Akhavan et al., 2010;Jafari et al., 2007;Jafari et al., 2011) for companies; otherwise,
the ignorance about environmental changes and lack of preparedness for future may
lead to losing plenty of emerging opportunities and eroding the competitive advantage
of organizations (Matson and McFarlane, 1999;Meehan and Dawson, 2002;Holweg,
2005;Storey et al., 2005;Reichhart and Holweg, 2007). Hence, many of the pioneering
companies try to continuously monitor the environment to maintain their competitive
advantage and stay in the pace (Garrett et al., 2009;Chao and Spillan, 2010).
Empowering performance in monitoring the environment with high sensitivity and
fostering appropriate and timely reaction to its changes will enable organizations to go
ahead and acknowledge emergent market needs and opportunities (Slater and Olson,
2002;Jafari et al., 2010) for further exploitation. Therefore, it is quite necessary for
organizations to improve such capabilities as tools for achieving and updating their
competitive advantages. From this perspective, this study attempts to investigate the
profound effects of knowledge management (KM) as a concept, beyond that of
information technology and systems, upon the development of environmental
responsiveness capability (ERC) towards introducing an effective tool for identication
and analysis of environmental changes and provision of appropriate solutions. The fact
is that KM increases the availability and accessibility of valuable knowledge at the right
time and to the right person, respectively (Akhavan et al., 2009), and provides the
knowledge for a business to quickly adapt to new market conditions (Tseng, 2010;Jafari
et al., 2009). In addition to KM, organizational culture which has contextual effects on
organizational processes (Jafari et al., 2008) such as KM and ERC has been included in
the research model as an independent variable. Furthermore, the effects of four types of
organizational culture are subsequently compared. Finally, based on the analysis of the
data collected from the sample population, the research hypotheses are tested and
ndings are presented accordingly.
2. Theoretical literature review
2.1 Organizational culture
Organizational cultures represent the characteristics of an organization, which direct its
employees’ day-to-day working relations and guide them on how to behave and
communicate within the organization, as well as how the company hierarchy is built
(Ribiere and Sitar, 2003). From this perspective, culture is one of the most important
features of an organization with contextual properties which can have both supportive
and deterrent effects on all areas and activities of the organization, including
responsiveness to environmental changes. Furthermore, organizational culture is one of
the key success factors of KM because culture affects learning, acquisition, sharing and
other related areas of knowledge (Alavi and Leidner, 2001;Gummer, 1998;Martin, 2000).
229
Organizational
culture
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