Putting sustainability at the core of knowledge management performance evaluation system

With the transformation of managerial views and the increasing focus on knowledge and intellectual capitals as the most important resources to the organizations, the necessity for retaining these resources and monitoring their effectiveness in order to know how they are utilized becomes significant. As for the universities, this requirement is even higher compared to other organizations, due to the fact that almost a complete chain of knowledge management processes and practices exist in the universities, from knowledge creation, planning, creation, development, and acquisition to knowledge updating, sharing, dissemination, utilization, and protection. Therefore, it is crucial to assess the performance of these knowledge management processes. Yet, it is noteworthy to re-look at universities to find out about their position in the community and their responsibilities towards the society at large. Universities do not operate in vacuum; rather their actions and decisions affect the society and the environment. Hence, any program aimed at evaluating the knowledge management performance of universities must also take into consideration their responsibilities toward the society and its sustainable development. This study emphasizes on the importance of putting sustainable development view at the core of any knowledge management performance evaluation effort and proposes a sustainable development-led framework for evaluating knowledge management performance in the university setting.