The internal characteristics of the organization make upcritical sources for success (Barney,
1991). Increasing attention has been paid to identifying whatcharacteristics are vital to
organizational success and how they exert their influence onorganizational outcomes. Internal
organizational context focuses on broad and relatively stablecategories of organizational
characteristics such as structure, culture, and power and politicalcharacteristics (Pettigrew,
1979). They constitute an environment where organizationalactivities take place. There has been
a large volume of studies that examine how the fit betweenorganizational context and
organizational strategy explains variances in organizationalperformance (Daft, 1995 and
Robbins, 1990). What is lacking in existing literature, though, isan understanding of the
intervening mechanism that explains the paths of the influence fromorganizational context and
strategy to organizational effectiveness.
Knowledge management plays a potentially mediating role inconnecting organizational context
and strategy with organizational effectiveness. Successfulknowledge management is believed to
have the potential of enhancing an organization'scompetitive advantage, customer focus,
employee relations and development, innovation, and lower costs(Skyrme and Arnindon, 1997).
In turn, knowledge management is context-specific, because contextdetermines who participate
and how they participate in the knowledge management process(Nonaka et al., 2000).
Knowledge management could serve as one of the interveningmechanisms through which
organizational context influences organizational effectiveness.However, the mediating role of
knowledge management has not been adequately investigated.Exploration of its potential role as
a mediating factor would provide better understanding of how toleverage it to achieve desirable
organizational goals. This study sets out to do that.
The purpose of this study is to examine the possible mediatingeffect of knowledge management
on the relationship between organizational culture, structure,strategy and organizational
effectiveness. This study attempts to detect and explain one of themechanisms through which
organizational contextual and strategic factors are mobilized toachieve higher levels of
organizational effectiveness.

What do you think is the significance of the aboveresearch? Clearly justify your answer.