Modeling the effect of knowledge management and social capital on organizational resilience with the mediating role of organizational agility (case study: Employees of Asaluyeh Petrochemical Company)

Document Type : Case study

Authors

Department of Industrial Engineering, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Nowadays, due to the increase in crises and destructive events at all levels of organizations and companies, creating flexibility has become the first priority of many organizations. Therefore, considering that the petrochemical industry is one of the industries that is very sensitive to disturbances and is associated with rapid technological changes and uncertainty, this research aims to investigate the mediating role of organizational agility in the relationship between social capital and knowledge management on organizational resilience was carried out in Asalouyeh Petrochemical Company. The research method is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of data collection. The statistical population of the research was the employees of Asalouyeh Petrochemical Company, whose number was 430. For this purpose, 203 people were selected as a statistical sample using a simple random sampling method and using Cochran's formula. The research data collection tools include three questionnaires by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1998) to evaluate knowledge management, Al-Omoush et al. (2020) questionnaire to evaluate social capital and organizational agility, and Prayak et al. (2018) questionnaire to evaluate organizational resilience. The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed through the comments of 10 academic experts. Also, construct validity (convergent and divergent validity) was checked and confirmed based on the extracted average variance criterion and composite reliability. To calculate the reliability of the questionnaires, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used (knowledge management: 0.802, social capital: 0.807, organizational resilience: 0.796, organizational agility: 0.821) and all coefficients were higher at 0.7, which indicates the used measurement tool has acceptable reliability. SPSS software was used to analyze demographic variables and descriptive statistics, and AMOS software was used to analyze inferential statistics and structural equation methods. The results showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the variables of social capital and knowledge management with the variables of organizational agility and organizational resilience. So the value of t-statistic is higher than 1.96 on all routes, which indicates significance at the 95% level. Also, the mediating role of organizational agility with a total effect of 0.643 on the path between knowledge management and organizational resilience is greater than the path between social capital and organizational resilience with a total effect of 0.120. In other words, the influence of organizational agility on the relationship between knowledge management and organizational resilience is greater than the relationship between social capital and organizational resilience. Based on the obtained results, it can be said that one of the best ways to deal with environmental changes and achieve a resilient organization is to lead the organization towards being agile. Organizational agility also requires the ability and knowledge management as one of the most important competitive advantages and the development of social capital to achieve organizational goals.

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