Management of Food Security Tacit Knowledge Focusing on Agricultural Jihad Headquarter in Fars Province of Iran

Food security is an old challenge in many developing countries including Iran and it is a function of two factors: population increasing growth and the trend of food production. Managing the existing stock of knowledge in Agricultural Jihad Organization (AJO), particularly explicit and tacit knowledge which is consistent with regional food security is the key task of managers and experts of AJO. The main argument of this paper was to study food security knowledge management among managers and experts of AJO by using Robertson Model. Using survey method, the study considered food security issue and the importance of livestock, horticulture and farming units. 68 experts were randomly selected from these units. The experts ascertained the face validity of questionnaire and the reliability of the questionnaire could be seen in the computed Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.72. To study tacit knowledge of food security 5 indicators were used and the results implied that 80 percent of respondents scored less than 20 from the maximum of 50. The results indicate from the explicit sources of information the most referred sources of information are books, magazines, reports and organizational research respectively. Dialogue among colleagues, participation in seminars and face to face conversation were among the mostly used forms of communication methods that would raise tacit knowledge. There is a positive and significant relationship between the use of magazines and food security tacit knowledge and between dialogue among colleagues and tacit knowledge. Finally, those who had a managerial position besides being a qualified staff during their employment possessed more food security tacit knowledge.