An Empirical Study of Employees’ Tacit Knowledge Sharing Behavior

Wang Juanru () and Yang Jin ()
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Wang Juanru: School of Management, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an710072, China
Yang Jin: School of Humanities, Economics and Law, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an710072, China

Journal of Systems Science and Information, 2015, vol. 3, issue 3, 264-278

Abstract: This paper is to investigate how employees’ tacit knowledge sharing behavior is influenced by various antecedents. We propose that tacit knowledge sharing consists of three specific behaviors (i.e., socialization, externalization, and internalization) and they are influenced by four antecedents (trust, self-efficacy, knowledge tacitness, and IT support). A survey was conducted to collect data from 258 knowledge workers who worked on complex product development projects. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results demonstrate that trust, self-efficacy, knowledge tacitness, and IT support significantly affect the externalization and internalization behaviors, and trust and IT support significantly affect the socialization behavior. This study is helpful to organizations where it is critical for employees to share tacit knowledge. It suggests that tacit knowledge is difficult to share and organizations should nurture mutual trust between employees, enhance their self-efficacy, and provide sufficient IT support so that they are more likely to engage in tacit knowledge sharing.

Keywords: tacit knowledge; knowledge sharing; trust; self-efficacy; IT support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:jossai:v:3:y:2015:i:3:p:264-278:n:5

DOI: 10.1515/JSSI-2015-0264

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