Motivating Knowledge Sharing

From Information Systems at Pitt Business

Organizations benefit from knowledge sharing, however, it is against the general nature of employees to share on a broad basis like a knowledge management system without some form of incentive or motivation. This paper studies the effects of supervisory control and perceived organizational support on knowledge sharing behavior in a large government agency through use of a survey instrument. The study finds that supervisory control appears to be a more powerful predictor over organizational support. And that the effort to codify knowledge into the repository is the most powerful predictor of frequency of contribution, followed by system usefulness.

[edit] Abstract

Based on both economic and sociological theory, the effects of supervisory control and organizational support on the frequency and effort of individuals in contributing their personally held valuable knowledge to a “best practices-lessons learned, repository-based” knowledge management system (KMS) were compared. Supervisory control, as expected, had significant impact on frequency, but it also had unexpectedly significant influence on effort. When system variables—usefulness and ease of use—were controlled for, the organizational support measure had little effect on either outcome. These results provide greater support for economic-agency-theory motivators of knowledge sharing and lesser support for organizational support motivators than has been previously believed. They also emphasize the important impact of systems variables in motivating KMS use. Since the study was conducted in a government (joint civilian–military) organization, the organizational type may significantly influence the results. However, since the result is contrary to the conventional wisdom that suggests that a “knowledge-sharing culture” is all-important, at the very least, this study shows that the nature of the organization may moderate the relationship between the motivational approach and the outcomes.

[edit] Paper Information

Authors: William King, Peter Marks Jr.

Check out this paper at Motivating Knowledge Sharing through a Knowledge Management System

This article was originally published in OMEGA, Vol 36, 2008.

[edit] Keywords

Knowledge sharing, Perceived organizational support, Supervisory control, Knowledge management systems, Motivation, Effectiveness