The success of any organization depends highly on choosing the right strategic orientation. The main objectives of the present study are to identify appropriate knowledge management (KM) strategies and their subsystems in the libraries of the Iranian universities of medical sciences and to examine their level of strategic alignment. The study population consisted of 55 managers and 225 librarians working at 33 central libraries in the Iranian universities of medical sciences. To carry out the research, two questionnaires were initially designed to collect information about the dominant system strategies and KM subsystems. Then, the means of the sum of the items that were planned for each strategy were calculated, the highest means in each group were considered as the basis for determining the dominant strategy and finally, the levels of alignment between different strategies were assessed. The results showed that regarding the degree of dynamism, maintaining the status quo was the dominant strategy of the KM system in the selected academic libraries, and regarding the knowledge acquisition and identification subsystem, passive was the dominant strategy. Externalization was the dominant strategy related to knowledge creation and transfer subsystem and static was the dominant strategy related to the knowledge application subsystem. As for the level of alignment between the strategies, the results revealed that the strategic alignment is at an average level. Based on the findings, improving the existing conditions in these libraries require a transition from traditional KM approaches toward more modern ones as well as the selection of optimal implementation strategies for KM system and subsystems.

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