* Corresponding author. Tel: +98914-121-8151 E-mail addresses: dadashkarimi_2006@yahoo.com (Y. Dadashkarimi) © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi: 10.5267/j.msl.2012.01.026 Management Science Letters 2 (2012) 1377–1384 Contents lists available at GrowingScience Management Science Letters homepage: www.GrowingScience.com/msl An empirical study on relationship between organizational culture and knowledge management: A case study of electric distribution in province of East Azarbayjan of Iran Yahya Dadashkarimi Department of Management, Bonab Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: Received September 15, 2011 Received in Revised form October, 30, 2011 Accepted 20 January 2012 Available online 26 January 2012 The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on knowledge management. To learn more about the organizational culture, we choose five variables including team-work, learning, discussion, management support and communication. The propose study consists one main hypothesis and five sub hypotheses and it is performed among all employees and management team of East Azarbayjan power supplier. The population of our survey includes 1482 people and a sample of 488 people is chosen in this survey. A questionnaire is distributed among all members and Cronbach Alpha is 0.83, which yields highly reliable results. The data are analyzed using SPSS software package with different non- parametric methods and the results confirm all hypotheses in our survey. According to the results of our survey, culture and communication play important role for the success of an idea and knowledge creation. Negotiation, top management support and learning style are second most important factors influencing knowledge management. © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Organizational culture Knowledge Management Creativity Team work 1. Introduction The new millennium has been nominated the century of creativity and innovation and companies with better ideas have chances of competition (Tsai et al., 2006; Richter & Niewiem, 2009). During the past few years, there have been tremendous efforts on promoting employees to use their creativity for presenting new ideas to help organizations better compete with other competitors. Ezati Jivan (2012) investigated the influence pattern of key factors affecting the purpose of organizational excellence consulting on the efficiency of businesses consulting services. He implemented his method on a real-world case study of small and medium-size food enterprises in Tehran province. His findings indicate that managers of small and medium-sized food enterprises in Tehran believe that providing accurate details of the quality of consulting programs, presenting a clear picture of the horizons faced by the organization and holding thank you ceremonies are among the mechanisms affecting the efficiency of management consulting services.