Predictors of employees’ perceptions of knowledge sharing cultures

Abstract

This study investigated whether organizational factors such as employees’ perceptions of management’s support for knowledge sharing, their perceptions of the organization’s social interaction culture, the organization’s size, and the organization’s available knowledge sharing technology, as well as whether individual factors such as age, gender, and organizational tenure had a significant impact on employees’ perceptions of a knowledge sharing culture. New measures to assess employees’ perceptions of management’s support for knowledge sharing, their perceptions of the organization’s social interaction culture, and the perceived knowledge sharing culture were developed. We found that perceptions of management’s support for knowledge sharing, and perceptions of a positive social interaction culture were both significant predictors of a perceived knowledge sharing culture. In addition, gender was a significant moderator: female participants required a more positive social interaction culture before they would perceive a knowledge sharing culture as positive as that perceived by their male counterparts.

Organizational size and knowledge flow: a proposed theoretical link

“…Organizational size, together with the quality of the workforce, is considered a component of the human capital of the firm (Namasivayam and Denizci, 2006). Connelly and Kelloway (2003) demonstrated empirically a negative relationship between organizational size and knowledge sharing resulting from changes in social interactions. The following subsections review the effect of organizational unit size on four important factors that impact internal knowledge flows.…”

“…Trust, then, can be assessed on the basis of personal interaction, and is limited to a specific small group of people; the larger this group, the fewer personal relationships employees have established that impedes knowledge sharing (Connelly and Kelloway, 2003). Reputation can signal an assessment based on trust, made by others, as an indication of whether trust should be extended.…”

“…Out of these various lines of thought, a number of specific, overlapping factors have been identified and reported by researchers (Huber, 2001;Cabrera and Cabrera, 2002;Connelly and Kelloway, 2003;Hutchings and Michailova, 2004;Bock et al, 2005Bock et al, , 2006 Lin and Lee, 2006;Michailova and Hutchings, 2006;Al-Alawi et al, 2007;Ang and Massingham, 2007;Du et al, 2007;Hall and Goody, 2007;Lin, 2007;Makela et al, 2007;Riege, 2007;Yang, 2007). Many of these research highlights are summarized here:…”

How Intellectual Stimulation Effects Knowledge Sharing, Innovation and Firm Performance

“…Top management support is one of important variables that can affect organizational knowledge [29]. Numerous studies have found the importance of top management support for creating a climate that supports and provides sufficient resources [30], [31].…”

Deploying Knowledge Management and Securing Future Sponsorship within a Highly Hierarchical ‘Role-Based’ Organisational Culture

“…The first was to demonstrate that senior management was committed to the project and that all necessary actions had been authorised. As Connelly and Kelloway (2003) explain, this is a very important task because perceptions about management's support for knowledge sharing are potentially necessary for the creation and maintenance of a positive knowledge sharing culture in an organisation. They also agree with Martiny (1998) that uncertainty about leadership commitment to knowledge sharing is a key challenge in the deployment of KM.…”