Determining the effect of organizational culture on knowledge management process and organizational performance: an application in five star hotels

In today?s everchanging world, organizations can only survive by adapting these changes. Organizational culture plays an important role in this adaptation. It is the main determinant of organization?s objectives, strategies and policies. Thus, it is the key factor for organizations to gain competitive advantage. The world is in the transition period to knowledge society and knowledge has become the most important factor of production recently. In this circumstances, it is believed that managing knowledge as the key factor of competitive advantage raises organizational performance. But, as knowledge management refers to the human centered process, it is affected by organizational culture. In this case, knowledge management would be a mediator variable that affects organizational performance and at the same time is affected by the organizational culture. In this thesis, the relationship between organizational culture and organizational performance and the mediating effect of knowledge management on this relationship is investigated for four different types of organizational culture. The study is conducted on the sample selected from the five star hotel establisments in Aegean region. Data for the research is provided by a questionaire which is structured according to the research questions. Analysis are made to compare four types of culture by the relationship between knowledge management and organizational performance Structural Equation Modelling and Path analysis is used for verifying mediating effect of knowledge management on different culture types. Key Words: 1)Knowledge Management, 2)Organizational Culture, 3)Organizational Performance,4)Hotel establishments, 5)Structural Equation Modelling