European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online) Vol 4, No.18, 2012 62 Are Private Universities Ready for Implementation of Knowledge Management in Iran? A Case study on Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur Branch Mohammad Lashkary 1 Esmail Khodai Matin 2* Behzad Hassannezhad Kashani 3 Kolonel Kasraei 4 1. Department of Economics, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur Branch, Neyshabur, Iran 2. Young Researchers Club, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur Branch, Neyshabur, Iran 3. Department of Business Management, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur Branch, Neyshabur, Iran 4. Department of Management, Islamic Azad University, Qeshm Branch, Qeshm, Iran * Email of the Corresponding Author: esmailkhodaimatin@gmail.com Abstract Nowadays, knowledge is the most fundamental and worthwhile capital for any organization. As a result of instantaneous changes and improvements, organizations have to do their best to access knowledge management. Universities which are considered as the pivotal centers of engendering and disseminating of knowledge can gain great advantage of knowledge management. In the direction of the beneficial performance of knowledge management, rudimentary investigation of its implementation is of vital importance; therefore, this study intends to ascertain the amount of basic infrastructures’ readiness to implement the knowledge management system (Organizational Culture, Organizational Structure, technical infrastructure) and rank these elements based on their importance in Islamic Azad University of Neyshabur. The statistical population of research is the faculty members of Islamic Azad university of Neyshabur. Stratified random sampling has been used and the required data collected through questionnaires. The questions, which have been formed the questionnaire, have been designed on the basis of Hurbert Rampersad questionnaire. The findings of the research indicate that Islamic Azad University of Neyshabur is at an average status of readiness for the application of knowledge management in different dimensions of ‘organizational culture’, ‘information technology infrastructure’ and ‘Organizational Structure’. The results of ranking test, Friedman test, also showed that ‘organizational culture’ is the most and ‘information technology’ is the least important element. Keywords: knowledge management, technical infrastructure, Organizational Culture, Organizational Structure, Islamic Azad University 1. Introduction Universities are today at their ‘third stream’ or ‘third mission’, This term refers to the various roles of universities such as economic improvement in addition to two traditional roles of educating and researching (Rossi, 2010). Therefore, universities try as hard as they can to improve and augment the intellectual capital through benefiting from the existing resources. Not only these resources consist of information resources, but also they include intellectual powers and human resources and it is required to recognize and gain advantage from them through the appropriate techniques of management (Hazeri & Sarafzadeh, 2006). Knowledge management, as a more apposite instrument and through managing the explicit and implicit properties of organizations’ knowledge, is an indication of ample study in this field and can get access to the novel objectives of universities in the knowledge era besides the traditional goals of education and research. It should be noticed that universities are the pivotal centers of engendering and disseminating of knowledge and also the vital resources of social improvements (Tian et al. 2009). Therefore, if knowledge management is not applied in the universities, most founts of intellectual capital and scientific products will be dwindled away on a massive scale. Additionally, paucity of retaining the tacit knowledge and assembled information during the process of accomplishing scientific researches, projects and experiences has made this equipment inaccessible for others. If the existing knowledge cannot be gathered and retained, it is not manageable in other times and places and this deficiency will bring about economic losses for the university in consequence of the fact that the university have to