The Relationship between Management Support and Knowledge Sharing: An Exploratory Study of Manufacturing Firms

Abstract

This research explores the relationship between management support and knowledge sharing. Qualitative data gathered through semi‐structured interviews was analysed using a Grounded Theory Methodology supported by nvivo qualitative data analysis software. The findings indicate that top and middle managers can play a significant role in supporting knowledge sharing. The primary roles that were found include the following: encouraging participation in decision‐making; provision of recognition; breaking down organizational and personal barriers; building up of teams; training, encouraging or assigning others to carry out training; encouragement of formal and informal communication; encouraging learning; putting knowledge into practice; and, encouraging movement of employees. The research findings have significant practical implications for managers, who can gain a deeper understanding of the knowledge sharing culture of their companies and a clearer picture of what kind of factors influence a company's culture. Practitioners managing knowledge sharing within an organization can use these findings to improve their organization's current practices and contribute to the development of its social structure, thus driving knowledge‐sharing effectiveness. This study extends previous research through the creation of a new, empirically‐founded model that clarifies the levels of decision‐making, the direction of decision‐making, and the direction and type of knowledge that flows between top and middle managers and frontline employees. In addition, a model of management support for knowledge sharing is proposed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Work experience influence on the knowledge sharing barriers perceived significance by higher educational institutions administrative employees

“…In particular, such convincing measures can include: Timely promotion of administrative subdivisions employees, making them satisfied with the organization adequately appreciating their knowledge and competences. Insufficiently fast promotion can lead to the employee's perception of being insufficiently valued by the organization, thus leading to reluctance to share sensitive knowledge in fear of further jeopardizing of position in the organizational formal and informal hierarchy (Al Saifi et al, 2016; Blagov et al, 2018). …”

“…As the administrative subdivisions employees with work experience less or more than a full academic year are different in their reluctance to knowledge sharing due to fear of jeopardizing sensitive knowledge, preferred respondents in research of such subdivisions (surely, in cases when the respondents' work experience is irrelevant for the research) should be employees with work experience of more than a full academic year (not to say that they could be more competent respondents due to having more knowledge in their knowledge portfolio). Indeed, evidence exists that if the knowledge holders are reluctant to share sensitive knowledge due to fear of its jeopardizing, they could be reluctant to share it not only with their colleagues, but with the researchers as well (Al Saifi et al, 2016).…”

“…A hierarchical level of a barrier place of occurrence is also used as a basis for barriers classification: see, for example, the categories of “individual or organizational level” in Riege (2005) or “personal, team, organizational and external level” (Olaniran, 2017). An hierarchical classification, however, is rather relative than absolute, depending from the researched organization's size and organizational structure (Al Saifi, Dillon, & McQueen, 2016; Paulin & Suneson, 2012): as barriers of individual and organizational level (as well as of external) can be described in all organizations, degree of manifestation of group level barriers (e.g., division of a collective into antagonistic informal subgroups) surely does depend on the organization's size (Burgess, 2005) and organizational structure centralization (Duchek, 2015; Garud & Kumaraswamy, 2005).…”

Matching value propositions with varied customer needs: The role of service modularity

“…Organizations sometimes lack the tacit knowledge necessary to perform the tasks within the process at a satisfactory level (Massingham & Al Holaibi, 2017). Management can play a significant role in supporting knowledge sharing (Al Saifi, Dillon, & McQueen, 2016), because perceived fairness and capability of the organization's policies and practices play an important role in terms of reinforcing employees' organizational commitment (Vanhala, Heilmann, & Salminen, 2016). Although professional services are often generated from expert-embedded and even tacit knowledge, which is hard to transfer, implementing modularity may offer one way to facilitate knowledge sharing related to service offerings, organizational processes, and practices (Nätti, Ulkuniemi, & Pekkarinen, 2017).…”

How to foster frontline employee knowledge sharing within service‐oriented enterprises: Empirical evidence from China

“…The knowledge sharing of FLEs is a unique and valuable resource for the enterprise, and the enterprise relies on it to gain competitive advantages. Knowledge sharing is not only the key process for transferring individual knowledge to organizational levels but also the foundation of innovation accumulation by the enterprise (Al Saifi, Dillon, & McQueen, ). The interaction between the individual factors (e.g., FLEs and customers) can also elicit the emergence of innovation at the individual level and ultimately promote the improvement of organizational innovation performance (Plowman et al, ).…”