Search

The present article aims to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between the employees’ psychological empowerment (PE) and dimensions of knowledge management (KM) in an oil company, using the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method. The study population consists of oil company experts. The sample size is determined based on the theoretical saturation limit. The present findings show that PE is the strongest causative factor with significant effects on knowledge creation (KC) and knowledge dissemination (KD). Among the KM dimensions, the most influential factors are the dimensions of KC, knowledge application, and knowledge capture (KCA). Of all KM dimensions, knowledge refinement is the most influential. The KC, in addition to being the most important dimension of KM affected by PE, is also found to influence all other dimensions of KM; this indicates its key role as a starting point in the process of KM. Considering the reciprocal effects of PE and the two dimensions of KM (KC and KD), it is important to pay attention to KC when developing a KM system. Importantly, the present findings show that PE and KM have an interdependent interaction. In other words, not only by improving the employees’ PE, the organizations can accelerate the KM process, but also by improving the KM systems, they may increase their employees’ PE. Based on the sensitivity analyses, our proposed method is as efficient as the available methods, such as interpretive structural modeling and Bayesian best-worst method.

Nowadays, in SMEs, especially the ones highly dependent on sales of products or services, supply chain management has a decisive and critical role for managers to make intelligent decisions and have high agility to utilise the opportunities in a very competitive environment. Identification of important and effective concepts and aspects in the scope of SCM in such enterprises to enhance the intelligence of managers in decision making processes is the purpose of this paper. In this research, by applying the grounded theory in the literature review and structural equation modelling (SEM) approach, the relations of main variables are validated thru focus groups and questionnaires and the results have been statistically analysed to develop a conceptual model. Therefore, with the aid of this model, the business managers will be directed to dedicate their efforts to enhance their business intelligence on the identified variables of the model to make intelligent supply chain oriented decisions.