Lending a helping hand: voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing

Abstract

Knowledge is essential for the functioning of every social system, especially for professionals in knowledge-intensive organisations. Since individuals do not possess all the work-related knowledge that they require, they turn to others in search for that knowledge. While prior research has mainly focused on antecedents and consequences of knowledge sharing and understanding why people do not share knowledge, less is known why people provide knowledge, and what conditions trigger voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing. Our article addresses this gap by proposing a multi-level framework for voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing: individual, relational, group, and informational. We provide illustrations from a particular knowledge-intensive community, DNA forensic scientists who work at public laboratories.

Exploration Participants Engagement in Organisational Knowledge Sharing

“…Participants' contributions to the second generation of KM systems strongly depends on their engagement in the knowledge sharing processes (van den Hooff and Huysman, 2009). Designing KM systems for participants' engagement improves individual participation and knowledge contributions (Mergel et al, 2008). Moreover, recent research on success factors of KM systems shows the importance of soft factor such as individual engagement in knowledge sharing rather than technological factors (Sedighi et al, 2015).…”

The Multiple Institutional Logics of Innovation

“…As a point of comparison we compare the results found here to two other studies that have similarly structured data. The first involves the diffusion of practices among state and local forensic DNA laboratories (Mergel, Lazer, and Binz-Scharf 2008;Binz-Scharf, Lazer, and Mergel, forthcoming); the second knowledge sharing among state health officials (SHOs) (Lazer and Mergel 2011). Both cases involved a similar combination of quantitative and qualitative data.…”

“…In short, reciprocity in networks may be a weak mechanism to support effective governance. Informal networks may play other, more important roles in supporting governance, for example in fostering the emergence of pro-social norms that encourages information sharing (Mergel, Lazer, and Binz-Scharf 2008). Norms that reward risk taking and innovation with status would certainly increase innovation.…”

The Public Manager 2.0: Preparing the Social Media Generation for a Networked Workplace

“…Take for example government DNA labs that have only one web-enabled computer that is in the hallway and restricts all private access to the Internet, and thereby pushes their employees to communicate with their peers in their free time on their private computers (Mergel, Lazer, & Binz-Scharf, 2008).…”