Is Trust the Most Important Human Factor Influencing Knowledge Sharing in Organisations?

M. Max Evans ()
Additional contact information
M. Max Evans: School of Information Studies, McGill University, 3661 Peel St., Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 1X1, Canada

Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM), 2013, vol. 12, issue 04, 1-17

Abstract: The present study explores several of the most significant social and cognitive human factors that have been found to motivate or inhibit organisational knowledge sharing in previous empirical studies. Of specific interest is the individual and collective effect that trust, shared language, shared vision, tie strength, homophily and relationship length have on three important conditions necessary for effective knowledge sharing to take place (i.e. willingness to share, willingness to use and perceived receipt of useful knowledge). The study also considers the nature of the employee working relationship (positive versus negative) and the form of knowledge sharing (explicit versus tacit). In total, 275 surveys were completed by employees working on projects at one of Canada's largest multijurisdictional law firms. Quantitative methods were used to examine the relationships between the dependent variables and independent variables, while controlling for all the other variables in the model.

Keywords: Knowledge sharing; trust; shared language; shared vision; tie strength; relationship length; homophily; empirical study; professional service firm; law firm; human and social enabless; knowledge management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S021964921350038X
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:jikmxx:v:12:y:2013:i:04:n:s021964921350038x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S021964921350038X

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM) is currently edited by Professor Suliman Hawamdeh

More articles in Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().