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Journal of Business Ethics (2007) 70:411428 Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10551-006-9119-0
To Share or Not to Share: Modeling Tacit Knowledge Sharing, Its Mediators and Antecedents Chieh-Peng Lin
ABSTRACT. Tacit knowledge sharing discussed in this study is important in the area of business ethics, because an unwillingness to share knowledge that may hurt an organizations survival is seen as being seriously unethical. In the proposed model of this study, distributive justice, procedural justice, and cooperativeness influence tacit knowledge sharing indirectly via two mediators: organizational commitment and trust in co-workers. Accordingly, instrumental ties and expressive ties influence tacit knowledge sharing indirectly only via the mediation of trust in co-workers. The model is assessed by using data from different companies employees, who attend an evening college in Taiwan for advance study. The test results of this study indicate that tacit knowledge sharing is affected by distributive justice, procedural justice, and cooperativeness indirectly via organizational commitment. Additionally, tacit knowledge sharing is also affected by distributive justice, instrumental ties, and expressive ties via trust in co-workers. The paths from procedural justice and cooperativeness to trust in coworkers are shown to be insignificant. Managerial implications of the empirical findings are also provided.
KEY WORDS: Knowledge management, organizational commitment, trust in co-workers, justice, cooperativeness
Introduction
Knowledge can be viewed as an icon of the new global economy and has achieved such prominence owing to its critical position in terms of global and national economic growth. Identied as individuals sharing relevant experiences and information with other organizational members, knowledge sharing is appropriately assumed to be an ethical behavior (Wang, 2004) that is, the willingness to share knowledge with others may be regarded as a proxy for recognition to a certain system of moral standards or values (Wang, 2004). Despite the increasing ease of use of having access to online information, employees still must count on their co-workers for knowledge sharing in order to efciently deal with their work due to a dramatically changing market.
It has been indicated that knowledge sharing is a precious intangible resource that holds the key to competitive advantage (Desouza, 2003). Considered as a form of ethics, knowledge (or information) sharing has become a kind of daily interaction common to many business settings (Chismar, 2001; Weiser, 1988). It has been...