Examining the Role of the Project Management Office in Creation of Knowledge Management Infrastructures in Project-Based Organizations of Iranian Oil & Gas Upstream Industry

Project-based organizations are subjected to lose company knowledge due to their nature after the dissolution of project teams; therefore, today the issue of projects knowledge management is one of major challenges in these organizations. In recent years many project-based organizations have added organizational unit named project management office to organizational chart in order to enhance consistency in managing their projects and to archive project knowledge. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the role of the project management office in creation of projects knowledge management infrastructures and study their status. The research used mixed method (quantitate and qualitative) approach. Survey and case study research strategy were applied. The statistical population includes active project-based organizations of oil & gas upstream industries in Iran and finally, the questionnaire was completed in the 47 project management offices in 41 organizations. The results show a very high linear relation between two mentioned variables. The results showed that the main function of the project management office in these organizations was "the establishment of methods and standards for project management" and then "project support". The "organizational culture", "human resources" and "management" have the "medium" and "structure" has the "least" among the infrastructures. In qualitative part, 4 organizations from mentioned organization were selected based on purposive sampling. The results of the qualitative section showed how the functions of the project management office were affected by the knowledge management infrastructure