Verifying relationship of knowledge management initiatives and the empowerment of human resources

Purpose - This paper was aimed at investigating the impact of knowledge management (KM) procedures on enriching human resources in Water and Waste Water Company in East Azerbaijan, Iran. Design/methodology/approach - The samples used in this study included the employees of Water and Waste Water Company in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, Iran. A questionnaire was used for collecting data from the employees of the abovementioned company. Its reliability and validity were first examined and checked. Then, Smart partial least squares 2.0 was used for analyzing the structural model. Findings - The results acknowledged the validity of the introduced model for enriching human resources. The findings indicated that five variables, namely, kind of knowledge, top managers, information technology, culture and organization of knowledge, have significant impact on enriching human resources. Research limitations/implications - It is undoubtable that research studies might have specific limitations which should be pointed out and addressed in future studies. The followings are the major limitations of the study: because the present study was carried out in Water and Wastewater Company in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, hence, generalizing the findings of this study to other professional contexts and organizations should be made with caution. In fact, the present study need to be replicated in other context to find whether the same or different results are obtained. In other words, different cultural, contextual and professional conditions might result differently from the ones reported here. Inasmuch as the present study was a cross-sectional study and the data were collected via questionnaire, a longitudinal study with a longer observation and investigation might shed more light on the efficacy of KMS in organizations. The present study focused on a specific dependent variable (human resource empowerment) which was explained by different dimensions of an independent variable, i.e. KM. However, the impact and efficacy of KMS can be investigated on other organizational variables and parameters. In this study, due to certain logistic and real-life limitations such as the limited time of the staff members of the target organization, we had to use only one data-collection instrument. Nevertheless, future studies can use data triangulation so as to better capture professional contexts of the study. Furthermore, another limitation of the study is related to the individual variables of the employees which remained untouched. That is, whether employees' personal, emotional and cognitive variables can modify the impact of KM on human resource empowerment was not investigated in the present study. Practical implications - Organizational managers are recommended to provide the background for employees to share their experiences. Organizations should invest on designing and developing patterns and strategic perspectives in human resource empowerment as a key factor toward becoming knowledge-based organizations. Originality/value - This paper is one of the few applied studies which acknowledged the relationship between knowledge management initiatives and empowering human resources. It addresses the gap between knowledge management and human resource empowerment.