The mediating role of knowledge management processes in the development of organizational innovation in the public sector

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among organizational factors, knowledge management processes and organizational innovation. In addition, the role of knowledge management processes as mediator in the development of organizational innovation also was investigated. In this study, four research questions and 25 hypotheses were examined. The population of this study was heads of supervisory departments of the public banks' branches in all of the Iran provinces. A questionnaire containing 42 questions with a likert-type scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) was used as the main instrument in gathering data and a total of 229 respondents were involved in the survey. As an analytical method, Structural Equation Modeling was selected using AMOS 16.0 version. The findings of this study identified the mediating role of knowledge management processes in the relationship between organizational factors and organizational innovation. Results of the Structural Equation Modeling analysis also revealed that "IT support" of organizational factors has the highest contribution toward the prediction of organizational innovation and so, the incentives and leadership of organizational factors were the second and third predictor variables of organizational innovation, respectively. From an academic point of view, the results of this study especially its intermediate linkage helps scholars understand the processes further, which might be helpful in discovering additional mediator at different levels of analysis.