Identifying and Evaluating the Effective Factors on the Knowledge Management Selection in the Rail Transportation Industry (Case study: the railway of Yazd)

Today, rail transportation as one of the transportation systems, according to advantages such as: environmental protection, low energy consumption and mass movement of passengers and cargo is of great importance and it should always try to maintain this position in the competitive world of transportation. Knowledge is not only assumed as a competitive advantage, but the only source of investment and competitiveness for enterprises. So, organizations should manage their knowledge in a purposive manner and choose a proper strategy on the basis of conditions and for this purpose a lot of organizational factors should be considered. This study aimed to identify and assess the factors affecting the choice of knowledge management strategy in railway of Yazd province. In this study, two groups are examined; the first population is the experts in the field of knowledge management and the second population includes senior managers and staff of railway Yazd with the total number of 120. The kind of study in terms of purpose is applied research, and in terms of data collection is a cross-sectional survey which was conducted by questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using a combination approach through ANP and fuzzy DEMATEL and the importance of performance and matrix were analyzed with SPSS software and Super Decision. According to the findings, five criteria were as follows: the nature of the organization (0.13), business strategy (0.10), organizational culture (0.095), organizational structure (0.09), manager's conservatism (0.087) and size of the organization (0.079). Due to the high importance and low performance of the nature of the organization and organizational culture, it is better that the railway organization of Yazd province focuses on these two criteria, so in this way allocate resources (time, financial and human capital) effectively and efficiently and improve organizational performance.