Content area
Full Text
Abstract: Numerous factors have been shown to influence organizational information and knowledge sharing, but perhaps none more than tie-strength and trust. Within the tie-strength literature, there are decades of research on the knowledge sharing benefits of both strong and weak ties. Moreover, it is commonly accepted that trust has a strong influence on tiestrength, as well as on knowledge sharing. However, only a few empirical studies have controlled for the influence of trust when considering whether weak or strong ties are more beneficial for knowledge sharing. The objective of this paper is to re-examine the relationships between tie-strength (weak and strong ties), trust, and effective knowledge sharing. Specifically, the study investigates the mediating effect of trust between tie-strength and receipt of useful knowledge. Data were collected at one of Canada's largest law firms with six offices nationwide. The firm manages a large number of project teams consisting of legal professionals, whose work requires reliance on co-workers, in and across offices. In total, 275 surveys were collected from knowledge workers engaged in shared legal project work. Tie-strength was based on co-worker interaction, frequency, and feelings of interpersonal closeness (measured while on and prior to working on a project). Trust was considered across three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness (i.e., competence-, integrity-, and benevolence-based) and the shared knowledge was considered useful when it had a perceived positive outcome on projects. Hypotheses were tested using linear regression and mediation analysis. The first finding was that strong ties led to the receipt of useful knowledge. A second finding was that both competence- and integrity-based trust fully mediated the link between strong ties and receipt of useful knowledge. Moreover, the mediating effect from integrity-based trust was of comparable importance to competence-based trust. A third finding was that when perceived trustworthiness was taken into account, any positive effect of strong ties on the receipt of useful knowledge was removed. Therefore, in this study it was trust, not weak ties, that led to the receipt of useful knowledge.
Keywords: trust, knowledge sharing, organizational knowledge, tie-strength, strong and weak ties
1. Introduction
There are significant individual, community, and organizational benefits for companies that effectively leverage their social networks (e.g., Allee, 2000; Uzzi, 1996), many of which directly relate to information and knowledge sharing....