Knowledge management: the ladder of research utilization

Introduction: Knowledge management helps us to share, learn and regenerate the new knowledge. Knowledge is the most important asset and greatest competitive advantage of many organizations today. Simultaneously, it can be observed that many organizations realize it is highly problematic and complicated to collect, store, retrieve, find, disseminate and reuse knowledge in modern fast changing organization. A subject now receiving a lot of attention is the utilization of knowledge. The study is description of factors explaining why researchers succeed in climbing up the echelons of the ladder of knowledge utilization. Methods: Using the internet resources, Google, Blackwell, Pub Med, Science Direct, WHO, and library resources of the Tabriz paramedical school, this study was carried out. Results: Knowledge utilization is a field of research concerned with factors explaining the utilization of scientific and technical knowledge, this field is expanding rapidly as universities and researchers are under pressure to increase the utilization of research results. In this paper, each stage the knowledge utilization scale is considered separately and compared to the previous stage in order to find factors explaining that researchers are able to climb up in the ladder of knowledge utilization from the echelon of no transmission to the echelon of transmission, then from the stage of transmission to that of cognition, from cognition to reference, from reference to effort, from effort to influence, and finally, from influence to application. Conclusion: The results suggest that the crucial stage of knowledge utilization is the stage of transmission. Nearly 30% of the scholars fail to climb the echelon of transmission and scholars differ on most of the explanatory variables when attempting to reach the echelon of transmission. The result of this study suggest that a scholar who attempts to provide research results to users will have to make significant investment in acquiring skills, expertise, and know-how purpose.