The mediation role of knowledge management between academic management and business education

The goal of this study is to examine knowledge management’s function as a mediator between academic management and business education. Knowledge management evolved in the last decades as an important component of the organizational management that focuses on intangible resources. In the knowledge economy, knowledge became a strategic resource and it needs a different type of management because it has different economic characteristics by comparison with tangible resources which are represented by physical objects. Knowledge management becomes dominant in the knowledge-intensive organizations, like universities, research centers, consulting companies, and those organizations where knowledge density and knowledge processes intensity determine the organizational performance.

From this perspective, it is interesting to analyze the role played by knowledge management in mediating the complex correlation between academic management and business education. Academic management is considered an independent variable and business education the outcome of the whole management of the teaching and learning processes. Knowledge management is the mediator of the whole process. The present research is based on qualitative and quantitative analyses. Qualitative investigation consist in a critical analysis of the literature, and quantitative research is a survey based on a questionnaire addressed to students and professors involved in business education from two Romanian universities. Statistical processing was done with SPSS version 26.0 and the macro PROCESS version 3.5. The findings back up the basic hypothesis and support the research model.