Knowledge Management, Organizational Health, and Employee Empowerment in Sport and Youth Departments: A Descriptive-Correlational Study

Abstract

This study examined the relationships among knowledge management, organizational health, and employee empowerment among employees of the Departments of Sport and Youth Affairs in Yazd Province, Iran. The study used an applied, descriptive-correlational design. The statistical population consisted of all employees working in the provincial Departments of Sport and Youth Affairs, and because the researchers had access to the whole population, a census method was used (n = 142). Data were collected using a demographic questionnaire, Lawson’s Knowledge Management Assessment Instrument, the Organizational Health Inventory developed by Hoy and colleagues, and Spreitzer’s Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire. Content validity was confirmed by ten sport management experts, and pilot reliability coefficients were 0.70 for knowledge management, 0.91 for organizational health, and 0.83 for employee empowerment. Data were analyzed in SPSS using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Pearson correlation coefficients, and regression analysis. The results showed positive and significant relationships between knowledge management and organizational health and between knowledge management and employee empowerment. All six dimensions of knowledge management—knowledge generation, knowledge acquisition, knowledge organization, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination, and knowledge application—were positively associated with both organizational health and employee empowerment. Regression findings also indicated that overall knowledge management predicted organizational health (β = 0.295, p = 0.002) and employee empowerment (β = 0.415, p < 0.001). These findings suggest that strengthening knowledge-management processes may be associated with healthier organizational conditions and higher employee empowerment in sport and youth administrative settings.