The moderating impact of national culture on the relationship between knowledge sharing and organisational effectiveness: The case of Iran’s private sector organisations

Sam Sadighi, Jokull Johannesson, and Lynne Nikolychuk

PhD Candidate, Cardiff School of Management, Cardiff Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

Professor in Strategy, School of Business and Law, Institute of Strategy and Leadership,University of Agder, Norway

Examiner at the University of London International Programmes, London School of Economics, United Kingdom

 Abstract:This paper investigates the relationship between knowledge sharing and organisational effectiveness, as well as testing for the possible moderating impact of national culture. Data for this paper was collected through the use of self-administered questionnaires. The results are based on responses from 357 managers of private sector organisations in Iran. To assess knowledge sharing, the researcher used the scale from Zheng, et al. (2009) and to investigate national culture and organisational effectiveness the scale from Nazarian (2013) was used. The regression analysis shows a significant relationship between knowledge sharing and organisational effectiveness; however, the moderating effect of national culture showed significant impact with the uncertainty avoidance dimension only. However, if national culture is taken as a single component in the regression analysis, a significant moderating correlation is evident.

Keywords: National Culture, Knowledge Sharing, Organisational Effectiveness, Iran, Private Sector