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Knowledge sharing recently has been an issue capturing the attention of both academic researchers and practitioners. When organizations introduce knowledge management and wish employees to share knowledge, conflicts may arise owing to individual differences in self-interest and ethical considerations. If knowledge is controlled by individuals, then sharing knowledge with others is assumed to be an ethical behavior. However, the question of whether employees are glad to share knowledge with others from self-interest concern still needs to be explored. This study uses an empirical survey to describe individual behavior within organizations regarding knowledge sharing decisions.
Introduction
Knowledge management developed from the need to capture, catalogue, preserve the knowledge that is part of organizational memory and typically resides within the organization in an unstructured way (Gupta et al., 2000). The objective of knowledge management is to support the creation, transfer, and application of knowledge in organizations (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). Knowledge management recently has been a key issue, capturing the attention of both academic researchers and practitioners (Almashari et al., 2002). Knowledge can be divided and conceptualized into explicit and tacit knowledge. One of the goals of organizations is to convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and transform individual knowledge into organizational knowledge (Inkpen and Dinur, 1998; Ruppel and Harrington, 2001). Organizations wish to convert tacit into explicit knowledge because explicit knowledge could be codified and transferred more easily than tacit knowledge. That is, an important goal of knowledge management is to foster knowledge conversion and sharing within organizations. This knowledge sharing and dissemination transforms individual knowledge into organizational knowledge.
Consensus regarding the nature of knowledge management remains elusive. When knowledge management is viewed as a process rather than an asset, the emphasis is on establishing an appropriate workplace environment for enabling and facilitating knowledge, both tacit and explicit knowledge, rather than on knowledge itself.
Knowledge sharing is not always an easy task (Hendriks, 1999). In some situation, it is a task easy to say but hard to implement. Information technology may be one key to build such an environment, but the ability of organizations to use technology to share knowledge depends on employee enthusiasm (Ruppel and Harrington, 2001: p. 38). Knowledge management is a product combining human and information technology (McDermott, 1999: p. 105).
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