In the development of knowledge economy, knowledge is recognized as the most important resource for enhancing or sustaining competition advantage. It is also a key factor for maintaining the long-term success of organizations. The beginning and an important stage of knowledge management is knowledge sharing which is the key to organization creation, learning, performance, and the prediction of successful knowledge management. It will increase the accumulation of organizational knowledge and advance the organizational ability. Knowledge management is traditionally dominated by the viewpoint of information technology. Researchers have emphasized the importance of information technology infrastructure and application in knowledge delivery. However, while explicit knowledge sharing is depended on the utilization of information technology, studies also indicated that tacit knowledge sharing is mainly depended on informal interaction between co-workers¡¦ emotional and the degree of trust.
Drawing on the perspective of social exchange theory, this research considers knowledge sharing as a social activity which is an exchange relationship between knowledge contributors and knowledge recipients¡]refer to team-member exchange, TMX¡^. In addition, the interaction between knowledge contributors and knowledge recipients is affected by the relationship between organization-member exchange¡]OMX¡^and leader-member exchange¡]LMX¡^. Therefore, this article investigates the factors which affect the willingness of knowledge sharing by considering the interaction and exchange relationship among individuals and organizations, managers, and other members in organizations. The individual and organization exchange relationship includes the challenging job characteristic and incentive system which provide by the organizations to motivate employees¡¦ knowledge sharing. Moreover, the inter-personal social exchange includes the interaction between co-workers and the interaction between individuals and managers. Employees would share their knowledge if they perceived the benefit of the interaction (either intrinsic or extrinsic) exceeded the cost (losing the power of holding the critical knowledge) of sharing the knowledge.
This research investigated how organizational factors (including job characteristics and incentive system), inter-personal factors (including trust and social support between co-workers and leader-member interaction), and team commitment effect the willingness of knowledge sharing. Further, the article also took the team commitment as the mediator and the account of the knowledge characteristics (both importance and taciturnity) into consideration as the moderators. The hypotheses were tested using a sample of R&D team members who work at Hsinchu Science Park or Southern Taiwan Science Park. The twenty-eight technology firms were selected using convenience sampling. Out of the 1,220 questionnaires had been sent, the 650 of them were completed. The data were tested using one way ANOVA, correlation, and hierarchical multiple regression.
The results indicated that organizational factors, inter-personal factors, and team commitment have positively related to the willingness of knowledge sharing. The team commitment fully mediated the relationship between willingness of knowledge sharing and incentive system, and leader-member interaction. The team commitment partially mediated the relationship between willingness of knowledge sharing and job characteristics, and co-worker interaction. In addition, the article also found that job characteristics, co-worker interaction, leader-member interaction, and team commitment were more strongly, positively related to the willingness of knowledge sharing when knowledge importance and taciturnity were being driven.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0625107-150959 |
| Date | 25 June 2007 |
| Creators | Huang, Chiung-hui |
| Contributors | none, Iuan-yuan Lu, none, none, none, Ing-Chung Huang, none |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0625107-150959 |
| Rights | not_available, Copyright information available at source archive |
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