Antecedents of knowledge sharing behaviour

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Achieving competitive advantage

The fundamental question in the field of strategic management is how organiza- tions achieve and sustain competitive advantage (Teece et al., 1997, p.509). Over the years, strategy researchers have developed a number of frameworks intended to help organizations achieve competitive advantage. In the 1980’s, the dominant approach was that due to Porter (1979, 1980). Seminal though it was, Porter’s industry-analytic approach, particularly as exemplified by his Five Forces Model, was later criticised (Zack, 1999) for ignoring the role of individual firm charac- teristics in achieving competitiveness. Indeed, as Powell (1996) notes, empirical studies that investigated the role of industry membership in the generation of competitive advantage consistently reported that it accounted for no more than 17 – 20% of financial performance. Consequently, from the mid 1980s onwards, researchers (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984) began to look within the organiza- tion for sources of competitive advantage, in the process developing what has come to be known as the “resource-based view”.
The resource-based view perceives the organization as a bundle of resources and capabilities that may potentially lead to competitive advantage. In this context, resource refers to “anything that could be thought of as a strength or weakness of a given firm”, or, more formally, “those (tangible and intangible) assets which are tied semi-permanently to the firm” (Wernerfelt, 1984, p.172), such as machinery, skilled personnel and efficient procedures. However, resources on their own are not productive; the organization needs to have the capacity to mobilize resources and put them to productive use (Grant, 2005). Thus, an organization may prosper because it has access to superior resources. More likely, however, an organization “may [prosper] not because it has better resources, but rather the [organization]’s distinctive use of resources involves making better use of its resources” (Mahoney & Pandian, 1992, p.365). Isolating knowledge as the key source of sustainable competitive advantage, researchers (Grant, 1996; Nonaka et al., 2000; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990; Spender, 1996) have further refined the resource-based view to form the knowledge-based view. To be sure, in arguing that resources and capabilities determine an organi- zation’s strategy and performance, the resource-based view does acknowledge the role of knowledge — embedded in routines and capabilities — in organizational success.
However, the knowledge-based view goes further and argues that organi- zations exist to integrate knowledge. As Kogut & Zander (1992, p.383-384) put it, “. . . what firms do better than markets is the sharing and transfer of the knowledge of individuals and groups within an organization [i.e.] organizations are social communities in which individual and social expertise is transformed into economically useful products and services by the application of a set of higher-order organizing principles”. In the knowledge-based view, then, the organization is perceived “… as a dynamic, evolving, quasi-autonomous system of knowledge production and appli- cation” (Spender, 1996, p.59), whose “primary role [is] integrating the specialist knowledge resident in individuals into goods and services” (Grant, 1996, p.120). In essence, the knowledge-based view maintains that if — as the resource-based view suggests — “… control over scarce resources is the key source of economic profits, then … such issues as skill acquisition, the management of knowledge and know-how, and learning become fundamental …” (Teece et al., 1997, p.514). In a real sense, then, knowledge management can be seen as a direct consequence of both the resource-based view, and, more directly, the knowledge-based view: if knowledge is such an important resource, should it not be properly managed? However, the emergence of knowledge management was driven not just by con- cerns in the academic community, but also by developments in the practice of strategic management. In the practitioner community, one key driver of knowledge management was the effect of the re-engineering movement of the 1990s; faced with such chal- lenges as increasing domain complexity, accelerating market volatility, and the emergence of a global economy in which competitors could literally be anywhere on earth (Becerra-Fernandez et al., 2004; Laudon & Laudon, 2002) many business found themselves struggling to stay afloat.
When many responded by shedding staff in order to be lean and mean, new challenges emerged: efforts to cut costs by reducing staff invariably led to the loss of valuable expertise (Becerra-Fernandez et al., 2004), in turn leading to loss of competitiveness, and, ultimately, profits. Thus knowledge management was in part fueled by the desire for companies to retain the knowledge and expertise of their employees even as such employees retired or otherwise left the company. An important factor underlying increasing turbulence in business environ- ments was the widespread use of information and communications technology (Wang, 2005), both because it makes remote markets and resources easier to ac- cess, but also because — through the use of standardised software packages (e.g. in Accounting) — it made it easy even for smaller companies to adopt well-tested business practices. In turn, turbulence in business environments accentuated the role of knowledge in ensuring that organizations respond quickly to ever changing market conditions. Consequently, extracting and storing knowledge were common themes in the early definitions of knowledge management, a sample list of which is provided by Awad & Ghaziri (2004). Whether one emphasises its “academic” or “practitioner” origins, it can be said that the emergence of knowledge management as a discipline is testimony to the rising importance of knowledge in contemporary economies.
As Becerra- Fernandez et al. (2004, p.2) posit, “knowledge management may simply be defined as doing what is needed to get the most out of knowledge resources”. But what precisely is knowledge? Defining ‘knowledge’ Knowledge has been a subject of inquiry since antiquity, yet no universally ac- cepted definition of the concept has been found. Commonly, knowledge is con- textualised in a hierarchy that begins with data, rises through information, to knowledge and wisdom; this framework is discussed comprehensively in Row- ley (2007). In this framework, data are seen as “unorganized and unprocessed facts”, information as “an aggregation of data that makes decision making easier”, knowledge as “understanding of information based on its perceived importance or relevance to a problem area”, and wisdom as “vision, foresight, and the ability to see beyond the horizon” (Awad & Ghaziri, 2004, p.36-40). Drawing from the earlier work of philosopher Michael Polanyi (Polanyi, 1967), Ikujiro Nonaka (Nonaka, 1991; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995) popularised the notion that knowledge can be either tacit or explicit. According to Nonaka (1991, p.98): “ Explicit knowledge is formal and systematic.
For this reason, it can be easily communicated and shared, in product specifications or a scientific formula or a computer program. Tacit knowledge … is not so easily expressible … It is hard to formal- ize, and,therefore, difficult to communicate to others … Tacit knowl- edge is deeply rooted in action and in an individual’s commitment to a specific context — a craft or profession, a particular technology or product market, or the activities of a work group or team. Tacit knowledge consists partly of technical skills — the kind of informal hard–to–pin–down skills captured in the term “know–how” … At the same time, tacit knowledge has an important cognitive dimension. It consists of mental models, beliefs and perspectives so ingrained we take them for granted, and therefore cannot easily articulate them. For this very reason, these implicit models profoundly shape how we perceive the world around us. ” Grant (2007) notes that Nonaka appears to have misunderstood Polanyi, and that subsequently, other authors have either uncritically accepted Nonaka’s ar- guments, or repeated his version of Polanyi’s philosophy without reading Polanyi himself.
Grant notes that in Polanyi’s view, tacit and explicit knowledge were not seen as two separate dimensions of knowledge; rather, tacit knowledge provided a background against which explicit knowledge may be viewed. Despite these crit- icisms, Nonaka’s work has had a lasting impact on knowledge management, and was particularly influential on the early approaches in which the emphasis was on converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge which could then be captured in electronic knowledge repositories and other knowledge bearing artefacts. Somewhat analogous to Nonaka’s tacit – explicit knowledge dichotomy, Becerra- Fernandez et al. (2004) note that knowledge can be viewed either subjectively or objectively, with the two perspectives differing on their attitude to reality: while the former views reality as being socially constructed, the latter views it as being independent of human perceptions. Viewed subjectively, knowledge has “no ex- istence independent of social practices and human experiences”, but exists either as a state of mind, or as practice: when knowledge is considered the state of an individual’s mind, the beliefs of individuals within organizations collectively constitute the organization’s knowledge; conversely, when knowledge is equated to practice, it is considered to be “held by a group, and not decomposable into el- ements possessed by individuals” (p.17). Viewed objectively, knowledge becomes storable, malleable — as something that can be extracted from human knowers and stored in knowledge management systems.

Contents :

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Background
  • 1.1.1 Achieving competitive advantage
  • 1.1.2 Defining ‘knowledge’
  • 1.1.3 Knowledge management
  • 1.1.4 Knowledge management in schools
  • 1.1.5 Knowledge sharing
  • 1.2 Statement of the problem
  • 1.3 Research questions
  • 1.4 Delimitations
  • 1.5 Assumptions
  • 1.6 Limitations
  • 1.7 Definition of core concepts
  • 1.7.1 Knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 1.7.2 Organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 1.7.3 Job satisfaction and organizational commitment
  • 1.8 Thesis structure
• 2 Antecedents of knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 2.1 Introduction
  • 2.2 Knowledge sharing as a ‘dependent’ variable
  • 2.3 Demographic variables and knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 2.4 Nature of knowledge
  • 2.5 Motivation to share
  • 2.5.1 Organizational rewards
  • 2.5.2 Image, outcome expectations, and employee aspirations
  • 2.5.3 Self-efficacy
  • 2.5.4 Fear and apprehension
  • 2.5.5 Attitudinal variables
  • 2.5.6 Altruism and enjoyment helping others
  • 2.5.7 Trust
  • 2.6 Opportunities to share
  • 2.6.1 Information and communications technology
  • 2.6.2 Social relationships and norms
  • 2.7 The culture of the work environment
  • 2.7.1 National and organizational culture
  • 2.7.2 Leadership and supervisory control
  • 2.7.3 Communication climate
  • 2.7.4 Organizational justice
  • 2.8 Relationships among factors
  • 2.9 Conclusions
• 3 Organizational citizenship behaviour and its antecedents
  • 3.1 Introduction
  • 3.2 Organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 3.2.1 Consequences of organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 3.2.1.1 Individual consequences of organizational citizen ship behaviour
  • 3.2.1.2 Organizational performance and effectiveness
  • 3.2.2 Antecedents of organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 3.2.2.1 Demographic variables
  • 3.2.2.2 Dispositions and attitudes
  • 3.2.2.3 Organizational justice, leadership and work envi ronments
  • 3.2.3 Organizational citizenship behaviours in school environments
  • 3.3 Job satisfaction
  • 3.3.1 Consequences of job satisfaction
  • 3.3.1.1 Job performance
  • 3.3.1.2 Turnover
  • 3.3.1.3 Absence and tardiness
  • 3.3.1.4 Health, well-being, and life satisfaction
  • 3.3.1.5 Organizational performance
  • 3.3.2 Antecedents of job satisfaction
  • 3.3.2.1 Job characteristics
  • 3.3.2.2 Work-family conflict
  • 3.3.2.3 Personality
  • 3.3.2.4 Gender
  • 3.3.2.5 Age and tenure
  • 3.3.3 Job satisfaction among teachers
  • 3.4 Organizational commitment
  • 3.4.1 Correlates of affective organizational commitment
  • 3.4.1.1 Turnover and turnover intentions
  • 3.4.1.2 Tardiness and absenteeism
  • 3.4.1.3 Job performance
  • 3.4.1.4 Person characteristics
  • 3.4.1.5 Organizational characteristics
  • 3.4.1.6 Work experiences
  • 3.4.2 Correlates of continuance organizational commitment
  • 3.4.3 Correlates of normative organizational commitment
  • 3.4.4 Organizational commitment among school teachers
  • 3.5 Conclusions
• 4 Research design
  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 Conceptual framework
  • 4.3 Hypothesis development
  • 4.3.1 Knowledge sharing behaviour and organizational citizen ship behaviour
  • 4.3.2 Job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 4.3.3 Job satisfaction, organizational commitment and knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 4.3.4 Job satisfaction and organizational commitment
  • 4.3.5 Structural equation model
  • 4.3.6 The role of demographic variables
  • 4.4 Instrumentation
  • 4.4.1 Knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 4.4.2 Organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 4.4.3 Job satisfaction
  • 4.4.4 Organizational commitment
  • 4.5 Research setting and sample selection
  • 4.6 Data collection procedures
  • 4.7 Procedures for data analysis
  • 4.7.1 Reliability and validy matters
  • 4.7.2 Hypothesis testing
  • 4.7.2.1 Hypothesis
  • 4.7.2.2 Hypotheses 2 and
  • 4.7.2.3 Hypotheses 4 and
  • 4.7.2.4 Hypothesis
  • 4.7.2.5 Hypothesis
  • 4.7.2.6 Hypothesis
  • 4.7.3 Structural equation modelling
  • 4.8 Conclusions
• 5 Data analysis
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 Sample description
  • 5.2.1 Respondent distribution by school
  • 5.2.2 Respondent distribution by gender
  • 5.2.3 Respondent distribution by age
  • 5.2.4 Respondent distribution by occupational tenure
  • 5.2.5 Respondent distribution by organizational tenure
  • 5.3 Scale properties
  • 5.3.1 Knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 5.3.2 Organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 5.3.3 Job Satisfaction
  • 5.3.4 Organizational commitment
  • 5.3.5 Levels of the study variables
  • 5.4 Hypothesis testing
  • 5.4.1 Knowledge sharing behaviour and organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 5.4.2 Job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 5.4.3 Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 5.4.4 Job satisfaction and organizational commitment
  • 5.4.5 Structural equation modelling
  • 5.4.6 Demographic variables and other study variables
  • 5.4.6.1 Age, organizational tenure, and occupational tenure
  • 5.4.6.2 Gender
  • 5.5 Conclusions
• 6 Discussion, conclusions and recommendations
  • 6.1 Introduction
  • 6.2 Restatement of the problem
  • 6.3 Discussion of findings
  • 6.3.1 General comments
  • 6.3.2 Knowledge sharing behaviour and organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 6.3.3 Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behaviour
  • 6.3.4 Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and knowledge sharing behaviour
  • 6.3.5 Job satisfaction and organizational commitment
  • 6.3.6 Structural equation modeling
  • 6.3.7 The role of demographic variables
  • 6.4 Research contributions and conclusions
  • 6.5 Implications for management
  • 6.6 Directions for future research
  • 6.7 Concluding remarks
• A Research letters and permits
• B Study questionnaire
• References

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