Current research has pointed out that a subsidiary ́s external network, constituted by its suppliers and customers at the local market, is very important for the corporation as a whole. In this study we seek to explore if this is the case for a certain Multinational corporation through exploring the usage of its networks. More specifically how the knowledge within its networks sharing contribute to the company’s innovation development process. A number of interviews have been conducted with personnel at a Multinational corporation, General Electric Healthcare Life Sciences in Uppsala. The results have been analyzed using a theoretical frame of reference covering network theory and a subsidiary’s part in it. Our findings show that even though the external network may play a necessary part, the internal network of a large Multinational corporation is an important resource and should not be ignored.

The rapid growth of network access and the development of Web 2.0 have resulted in the popularity of virtual communities (VCs), such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Although these online communities provide no monetary incentive for sharing knowledge, as most businesses will do, they still become a popular platform for knowledge sharing. The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivation for people to contribute in virtual communities, whether their motivations differ in different types of virtual communities, and whether their behavior and motivations will be affected by monetary reward. Social exchange theory and self determination theory were adopted to explore the relationships between behavior and motivations of virtual community members. Motivation crowding theory was used to examine the effect of monetary reward on knowledge sharing. The research framework includes two types of motivators (intrinsic and extrinsic), two different virtual community types (common identity vs. common bond), and one treatment (monetary reward). An online survey and an experiment with monetary incentive were conducted on two virtual communities: ITToolbox and LinkedIn. The results showed that there were significant moderating effects between these two types of virtual communities. A strong positive relationship was found between intrinsic motivation and knowledge sharing for the professional community (common identity). In contrast, the relationship between extrinsic motivation and knowledge sharing was stronger in the social networking community (common bond). The results also confirmed the existence of the crowding effect that the intrinsic motivation was significantly declined when an extrinsic monetary reward was provided.

This essay investigating outbound factors by theoretical planning behaviors approach which generate knowledge information sharing component to knowledge workers of IC Testing/Assembly plant. The external essence and factor is divided into Individual-Level Factors, Team-Level Factors and Organizational-Level Factors: Individual-Level factors including motives (Self-Interest factor and altruistic Factor), job satisfaction; Team-Level Factors should be complied with trust, leaderships; Organizational-Level Factors would be concluded with enterprise culture, management constitutions. Investigated objects would be focused on Walton Advanced Engineering Co.,Ltd., after sampling with the IT engineering, I have concluded with the following issues: 1. Self-Interest factor and job satisfactory factor would be greater influence than the altruistic Factor. 2. Leadership is a critical influencing factor in the knowledge sharing process. 3. Trust is an essential factor for knowledge sharing within a group. 4. Culture and reward system are the most influencing factor for knowledge sharing. 5. It is necessary to tie in administrative strategy to raise the wills to share knowledge. 6. Encouraging group members explode the nuclear tacit knowledge benefits a lot to individuals and overall group improvement and growth. 7. It is quite a challenge to enterprise to build the knowledge sharing mechanism. Hoping the conclusions above would benefit to those knowledge works related managers and knowledge owners to inherit and preserver the main essence of knowledge base for their working groups.

Social networks and social capital issues have been combined with organizational behavior scope for decades. Nevertheless, the difficulty of methodology and data collection causes the rareness of related empirical study. In this dissertation, multi-level research structure and hypothesis, including dyadic-level, individual-level, and network-level, are proposed to be examined respectively. 505 questionnaires were collected from 17 companies providing a great deal of support to be analyzed by social network analysis technique of UCINET VI for windows. The following are results and conclusions of each research level: For dyadic level, ¡§cognition-based trust¡¨ and ¡§affect-based trust¡¨ are core variables representing dyadic relationship quality. Similarity/attraction paradigm, self-categorizing, and social identity were used as theory basis to prove the positive effects of antecedents embracing gender, education level, age, and tenure similarity, also the ¡§value fit¡¨ and ¡§cognitive friendship¡¨, on dyadic relationship quality and interaction behaviors. The results demonstrate the higher similarity of education level and tenure between two individuals, the greater level of value fit, friendships, cognitive-based trust, affect-based trust, knowledge sharing, and citizenship behaviors. Cognition and affect trusts between two individuals cause the knowledge sharing and citizenship behaviors for each other. The positive effects of gender differences on relationship quality are discovered unexpectedly. For individual level, the normalized in-degree of centralities of ¡§advice networks¡¨ and ¡§friendship networks¡¨ were measured by social network analysis techniques to be examined as core variables. I draw on the formal organization structure (work flow network centrality and rank), personalities (conscientiousness, high-low self-monitoring, extraversion/introversion, collectivism/individualism), and job characteristics (job inter-dependency and work loading) for the antecedent variables of ¡§advice networks¡¨, ¡§friendship networks¡¨, and personal contextual performance (knowledge sharing and citizenship behaviors). Also treat the ¡§personal social capital¡¨ as the mediate variables among personal social networks and personal contextual performance. The results demonstrate the positive effects of rank, work flow network centrality, conscientiousness, self-monitoring, collectivism, and job inter-dependency on the centrality of advice network. The negative-effects of work loading are also verified. For the centrality of friendship network, the results proved the positive effects of the work flow network centrality, and conscientiousness, also the negative effects of work loading on it. Knowledge sharing behaviors representing the part of personal contextual performance are positively affected by conscientiousness, self-monitoring, rank, work flow network centrality, advice network centrality, friendship network centrality, and personal social capital. Work loading influences the knowledge sharing behaviors negatively. Citizenship behaviors that also represent the part of personal contextual performance are influenced by advice network centrality, friendship network centrality, and personal social capital. The mediating effects of social capital among personal social networks and personal contextual performance are also manifested. For network level, the comparisons among formal organization structure and nine intra-organizational social networks demonstrate the influences of rank and division on social network structural configuration. I also draw on the similarity-attraction paradigm as the theory basis to examine the positive effects of the similarity of department, gender, age, education-level, marriage status, and nine intra-organizational social network matrices on the relational matrices of friendship and affect-trust. MRQAP (Multiple Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure) technique is applied on this analysis. The results verified the positive effects of the similarity of department, gender, and marriage status on friendship and affect-trust between two individuals. In addition, the theoretical and managerial implications, limitations and future research questions based on the findings and suggestions for future research are provided.

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In this study, we integrate the theories of self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, and social capital to identify individual and contextual factors that may exert effect on professional teachers' knowledge sharing behaviors in an Internet-based knowledge community. Data collected from 441 members of this community reveal that knowledge sharing self-efficacy has significant influence on knowledge sharing outcome expectancy, anxiety, and knowledge sharing behaviors. In addition, relational identity, i.e., the degree of social capital among members, is found to have positive effects on knowledge sharing self-efficacy and knowledge sharing behaviors. The implication of this study is that both the individual perceptions toward knowledge sharing and the interpersonal relational development are important predictors of ongoing knowledge sharing activities. The organizers of Internet-based knowledge communities should therefore focus on the development of members' resilient self-efficacy, favorable outcome expectancy, and strong relational identity if they wish knowledge sharing to be effective.

With a view to achieve the ultimate goal of a permanent development, operation, and growth, to any business and enterprise, the strategy of knowledge management must be reinforced, and the sooner the better. In despite of those new and high interests shown toward the organization-embedded knowledge, not much concrete finding has been obtained regarding how and why employees are reluctant to share what they know. In our research, we proposed to base on the Relations Model Theory to explore how different relation models, cultivated and shaped by different corporate cultures, give their influences on the willingness of knowledge sharing from employees. In the mean time, with a view to get closer to the realistic circumstance in the office, we give it a shot to include additional moderating variables, task inter-dependence, as well as time-of-cooperation, into our full research framework, aiming to see if they will disturb the influencing processes between the four principal relations and the willingness of employees to share their knowledge. The result reflects the distinct impact from communal sharing and equality matching on the willingness of sharing, while a subtle but negative impact of market pricing on the sharing willingness. There is no clear effect of authority ranking. Furthermore, in the analysis of interaction mode including additional moderators, the result has exhibited that task inter-dependence does moderate the relationship between communal sharing / equality matching / market pricing and the notion of sharing, while time-of-cooperation also adjusts the influencing processes between communal sharing, equality matching, market pricing, and willingness of sharing. This analysis and study grant us some clues regarding how corporate culture would eventually leverage employees¡¦ intention in sharing their knowledge, and advise the business organizations how they should correctly formulate the knowledge management strategy and activities to augment the knowledge inter-flows between employees.

The objective of this thesis is to develop a theoretical understanding of team-based knowledge sharing and creation in professional cyber-communities. In order to provide contextual richness in environmental, information technology, project, organizational, group, and individual contexts, we apply the grounded theory approach to discover essential factors affecting team-based knowledge sharing and creation across organizational boundaries. Moreover, the thesis summarizes five types of processes of team-based knowledge sharing and creation in professional cyber-communities, defined by the sequence of causal conditions, action/interactional strategies, and consequences, and concludes nine main propositions that can be tested empirically in the future research. The research results will support sustained development of professional cyber-communities and be a basis for further studies of team-based knowledge sharing and creation across organizational boundaries.

The environment of medical industry in Taiwan is unprecedented rigorous. Except the finance pressure of medical expense billing and the increasing demand of the quality of medical service, recently due to the change of government health insurance policy, each medical organization strives for the rare resource and limited customer, not only start changing the type of the medical service, but also emphasis on improving the function of hospital management and controlling the cost. Formerly, purchasing simply means buying goods; but now, for the rigorous medical management environment and the rapid pace of innovation, purchasing clerk is required constant skill upgrading, such as leasing, loaning, BOT and outsourcing by contract, to obtain the use of goods and to satisfy the aim of demand. Additionally, the way to obtain the operation or ownership of goods is different from the former way. Contributed to the change, it presents its importance in business management. So, this research wants to investigate the relationship of human capital, knowledge sharing will, purchasing ability and purchasing performance. We applied exploratory and confirmatory analysis to investigate the relationship involved. The samples were purchasing clerks of hospital, including medical centers, regional hospitals and area hospitals. Out of 400 questionnaires were sent, the valid questionnaires returned were 114. Factor analysis , variable analysis, regression analysis were used to process the data acquired. The major findings of the research are summarized as follows: (1) the human capital of purchasing clerk is positive effect to purchasing ability and purchasing performance. (2) knowledge sharing will is positive effect to purchasing ability and purchasing performance (3)purchasing ability is positive effect to purchasing performance (4) purchasing ability has the mediate effect among human capital and knowledge sharing will with purchasing performance.

<p>Today we are living in a knowledge-society where knowledge sharing is of utmost importance for companies in order to keep their competitiveness. Therefore, it is a much debated issue - in both the academic and the corporate world - in what way one should handle the knowledge which continuously is created within companies. The aim of this study is to describe how practitioners share tacit knowledge within a large knowledge company. By that we aim to get an answer to how the chosen theoretical models regarding tacit knowledge relate to the empirical world. In this study we will focus on tacit knowledge in contrast to explicit one. Further we will not study knowledge sharing between organisations but concentrate on this process within them. We chose to approach the purpose of this study in a qualitative way by conducting interviews within a large knowledge-firm. The company was Systems Integration within the Ericsson-group where we held interviews with four persons familiar with knowledge. Furthermore, we have perceived that theories concerning the knowledge-sharing process are relatively fragmented. Therefore, we have built a model which links the different theories together in order to give a better overview of the whole process. Having conducted the study, we found that the case company to some extent handlesknowledge in line with the theories chosen. Furthermore, we came to the conclusion that some modifications in the model are necessary in order to achieve a successful knowledge-sharing process.</p>