Effect of Employees' Entrepreneurial Orientations on Knowledge Management in Small and Medium Enterprises in Iran

The present study aims to fill the gap and investigate the effects of entrepreneurial orientations (innovativeness, risk-taking and proactiveness) on knowledge management (knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge storage and knowledge application) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Descriptive and correlation (regression) methods were applied in the study. Target population of the research consisted of 15000 employees in 765 industrial production units of Toos Industrial Town which were active in the production of food, textile, chemic, cellulose, metallic and non-metallic mineral, electricity and electronics. The sample size is 375 and random stratified sampling method applied to collect data. The research tool was a standard questionnaire. Regression and correlation methods and SPSS software were used to assess the collected data. The findings revealed that there is a significant relationship between the entrepreneurial orientations and knowledge management. The results of regression analysis also showed that the factors of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking have significant effects on the knowledge management changes; they also allocate more than 27 percent of knowledge management variance.