It’s Just Emotion Taking Me Over: Investigating the Role of Emotions in Knowledge Management Research

Abstract

The importance of emotions has increasingly been recognized in the information systems field. Emotions do not only influence the human mind, but can also be transferred to others through knowledge. This transfer of knowledge is part of the broader organizational concept of knowledge management (KM) and requires the attention of researchers interested in emotions and emotion theories. Therefore, our paper presents a systematic review of existing evidence on the emotions' role in KM research. Our review shows that despite KM's long tradition, there is only limited evidence as to how emotions are related to KM, most of which mention emotions as motivation for KM. As a result of our study, we identify four research opportunities to further examine certain aspects of emotions' role in KM.

When Emotions Rule Knowledge

“…For instance, concerning KM processes, the roles of emotional intelligence (Decker et al, 2009;Peng, 2013;Trong Tuan, 2013) and emotional obstacles (Lin et al, 2006;Pemberton et al, 2007) have been investigated. However, an integrated and comprehensive overview of emotions, unbiased by any particular single topic, is still lacking, and it is necessary to consolidate research on single emotions and emotional concepts (Hornung & Smolnik, 2018), and in which nexus they are displayed in KM research -with a taxonomy of emotions in KM research as the ultimate goal. To arrive at a comprehensive taxonomy of emotions in KM and close the aforementioned gap, it is crucial to understand which emotions are prevalent in and dominate KM research.…”