Life Science Journal 2012;9(2s) http://www.lifesciencesite.com http://www.lifesciencesite.com lifesciencej@gmail.com 8 Identification and Prioritization the Critical Success Factors of Knowledge Management in IAU of Tabriz (Iran) Behnam Talebi 1 , Mehdi Pakdel Bonab 2 , Ghader Zemestani 3 , Zarrin Daneshvar 4 1-Corresponding Author, Department of Educational Administration ,Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran 2-Young Researchers Club, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran 3-Young Researchers Club, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran 4-Department of Educational Administration ,Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran Abstract: This study aimed to identify and prioritize the Critical Success Factors of knowledge management in Islamic Azad University of Tabriz in the year 2012, taking into CSF: organizational culture, organizational structure, human resource management, information technology infrastructure, knowledge strategy and leadership, training of human resources and studies have been done on them. Using statistical tests indicate a significant impact of all factors on KM. Sample population was all 468 university faculty members. Also estimating the contribution of each factor in predicting KM, one of the most powerful contributions is organizational structure (0.391) and other factors are organizational culture: 0.291, information technology infrastructure: 0.289, knowledge strategy and leadership: 0.248, training human Resources: 0.2 and human Resource Management: 0.21 respectively. [Behnam Talebi, Mehdi Pakdel Bonab, Ghader Zemestani, Zarrin Daneshvar. Identification and Prioritization the Critical Success Factors of Knowledge Management in IAU of Tabriz (Iran). Life Sci J 2012;9(2s):8-14] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com . 2 Keywords: knowledge Management, Critical Success Factors , Higher Education Introduction Since 1970s and with the development of top technologies, especially in the field of communications and computing, the pattern for world economic growth changed dramatically. Afterwards, since 1990s knowledge, as the most important property, replaced monetary and physical assets (Chen, & et. al., 2004). With the turn of the millennium rapid changes in technologies happened .In such circumstances, a competitive strategy requires a new type of organization that is able to have a qualitative knowledge. Therefore, the managers are expected to have a deep understanding of the organizational performances. They must also improve their organization's performance through investing on knowledge-based projects (Rahnavard & Mohammadi, 2009). KM focuses on creating value which means managing the existing knowledge and converting it into useful knowledge in organizations and has two main parts: KM and increasing the ability to create new knowledge and innovation which the most important change in the new millennium is not using everyday growing knowledge but knowledge is used more and therefore becomes useless (Niazazari and Amoyie, 2007). KM is a field in which knowledge managers and the forces act at ideal time, knowledge is used for the organizational purposes, storage, and retrieval. Literature Review The definition of the concept of KM presented by Petrish puts: KM is achieving the proper knowledge for the right people at the right time and place in a way that they can utilize the knowledge effectively to attain the organizational goals (American Center for Quality and Productivity, 1996). Snowden introduces KM as the optimal planning and active management of the intellectual capital .This knowledge can be the explicit knowledge present on human-built constructions or it can be in the form of implied knowledge which is available to individuals or groups (Zafaryan and et. al, 2008). Semen believes that KM is the intellectual designation of processes, tools and structures with the aim of increasing, renewal, sharing and improving the knowledge that can be found in each of the three elements of intellectual capital (structural), social and humanistic properties (Gupta and et. al, 2000). KM is a process which helps organizations identify, choose, organize and publish the important information and skills that are regarded as the memory of organization and so these elements are usually organized in this manner (Karnamehhaggi and Akbari, 2004). Researches in the field of KM indicate that the factors expressed in these researches are whether very general or very detailed (Matusik and Hill, 1998). Besides, in some of these researches some components of KM cycle have been listed among the key factors of success showing a high overlap for the mentioned factors (Arazmcho and