...supporting or inhibiting individuals' knowledge-sharing intentions. We employ as our theoretical framework the theory of reasoned action (TRA), and augment it with extrinsic motivators, social-psychological forces and organizational climate factors that are believed to influence individuals' knowledge-sharing intentions.

Through a field survey of 154 managers from 27 Korean organizations, we confirm our hypothesis that attitudes toward and subjective norms with regard to knowledge sharing as well as organizational climate affect individuals' intentions to share knowledge. Additionally, we find that anticipated reciprocal relationships affect individuals' attitudes toward knowledge sharing while both sense of self-worth and organizational climate affect subjective norms. Contrary to common belief, we find anticipated extrinsic rewards exert a negative effect on individuals' knowledge-sharing attitudes.

Keywords: Knowledge sharing, theory of reasoned action, extrinsic motivators, social-psychological forces, organizational climate

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Introduction

In the knowledge-based view of the firm (Grant 1991, 1996; Spender 1996; Teece 2000), knowledge is the foundation of a firm's competitive advantage and, ultimately, the primary driver of a firm's value. Inherently, however, knowledge resides within individuals (Nonaka and Konno 1998) and, more specifically, in the employees who create, recognize, archive, access, and apply knowledge in carrying out their tasks. Consequently, the movement of knowledge across individual and organizational boundaries, into and from repositories, and into organizational routines and practices is ultimately dependent on employees' knowledge-sharing behaviors. When knowledge sharing is limited across an organization, the likelihood increases that knowledge gaps will arise, and these gaps are likely to produce less-than-desirable work outcomes (Baird and Henderson 2001).

Extensive knowledge sharing within organizations still appears to be the exception rather than the rule. Hoarding knowledge and looking guardedly at the knowledge offered by others are natural human tendencies (Davenport and Prusak 1998). Moreover, many, if not most, firms actively limit knowledge sharing because of the threats associated with industrial espionage as well as concerns about diverting or overloading employees' work-related attention (Constant et al. 1994). Also, organizational incentive structures, such as pay-for-performance compensation schemes, can serve to discourage knowledge sharing if employees believe that knowledge sharing will hinder their personal efforts to distinguish themselves relative to their coworkers (Huber 2001). Once established, work climates unfavorable to knowledge sharing are difficult to change (Ruggles 1998).

The objective of this study is to deepen our understanding of the factors that increase or lessen employees' tendencies to engage in knowledge-sharing behaviors. Since knowledge sharing behaviors are likely to be influenced not only by personal motivations but also by contextual forces (Yoo and Torrey 2002), we apply a theoretical frame in which extrinsic motivators, social-psychological forces and organizational climate are integrated with the theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980).

This paper is organized into six sections including this introduction. The next section surveys the salient literature to identify antecedents to employees' attitudes regarding knowledge sharing, and describes our data gathering activities to complement the existing literature. The third section presents the research model and develops the research hypotheses characterizing the relationships depicted in the model. The fourth section describes our research methods, while the fifth discusses the results and their implications for research and practice. The last section summarizes the study's contributions.

Theoretical Framing

Knowledge management has been defined as the process of capturing, storing, sharing, and using knowledge (Davenport and Prusak 1998). More specific to this study, knowledge sharing concerns the willingness of individuals in an organization to share with others the knowledge they have acquired or created (Gibbert and Krause 2002). The sharing could be done directly via communication or indirectly via some knowledge archive.

The operative phrase here is "the willingness of individuals." As mentioned above, organizational knowledge largely resides within individuals. Even with the codification of knowledge, knowledge objects remain unexposed to (and hence unrecognizable by) others until the knowledge owner makes the objects available. In a practical sense, knowledge sharing cannot be forced but can only be encouraged and facilitated (Gibbert and Krause 2002). It comes as no surprise that changing people's behaviors is generally considered to be the most severe challenge facing firms desiring to increase their members' knowledge-sharing behaviors. But what, exactly, are the levers or factors likely to motivate or otherwise induce such behaviors?

Insights from the Existing Literature

Szulanski (1996) suggests that motivational forces derive from one of two bases: (1) employees' personal belief structures and (2) institutional structures, i.e., values, norms and accepted practices which are instrumental in shaping individuals' belief structures (Delong and Fahey 2000). Each of these is now discussed.

Personal Belief Structures

As knowledge sharing does not come without participant costs, personal beliefs that expected benefits will outweigh these costs are likely to be an important determinant of knowledge sharing behaviors. Not only does sharing knowledge take both time and effort (Gibbert and Krause 2002), but doing so in an organizational setting results in the classic public good dilemma (Barry and Hardin 1982; Marwell and Oliver 1993): a knowledge asset contributed for the good of the organization can be used by others regardless of whether or not they make a contribution in return (Dawes 1980; Thorn and Connolly 1987). This dilemma is intensified when expertise (i.e., personal reputation) is highly valued in an organization but mentoring or assisting others is not (Leonard and Sensiper 1998). Not only does an individual choosing to share knowledge stand to lose his/her unique value within the organization, but any knowledge shared that is subsequently judged to be unsound or irrelevant can damage his/her reputation. Consequently, the lack of sufficient extrinsic and/or intrinsic rewards to compensate individuals for the costs of sharing knowledge becomes a common barrier to knowledge sharing (Constant et al. 1994, 1996; Huber 2001).

In their recent review of knowledge sharing literature, Kalling and Styhre (2003) comment on the relative lack of attention paid to the role of motivational factors that influence knowledge sharing behaviors. Our synthesis of the literature suggests that the salient motivational factors surfaced by other researchers reflect three levels of motivational forces.

* Individual benefit, i.e., self-interest, personal gain, etc. (Constant et al. 1994, 1996; Tampoe 1996; Wasko and Faraj 2000)

* Group benefit, i.e., reciprocal behaviors, relationships with others, community interest, etc. (Constant et al. 1994, 1996; Kalman 1999; Wasko and Faraj 2000)

* Organizational benefit, i.e., organizational gain, organizational commitment, etc. (Kalman 1999)

Institutional Structures

Institutional structures are typically referred to as an organization's culture or climate. An interesting debate has evolved in the organizational sciences about the distinction between organizational culture and organizational climate. Dennison (1996) argues that the difference between organizational culture and organizational climate is one of perspectives rather than substance. The literature on organizational culture and the literature on organizational climate address a common phenomenon: the creation and influence of social contexts in organizations. Climate refers to a contextual situation at a point in time and its link to the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of organizational members. Thus, it is temporal, subjective, and often subject to direct manipulation by people with power and influence. Culture, in contrast, refers to an evolved context within which specific situations are embedded. Thus, it is rooted in history, collectively held, and sufficiently complex to resist attempts at direct manipulation. Generally, quantitative survey-based research taps into the features of an organization's climate whereas qualitative and interpretive research delves into the nature of an organization's culture. Given that the focus of our study lies with quantitatively assessing individuals' perceptions of their organizational context, we follow Dennison's (1996) ideas and refer to salient institutional structures as organizational climate.

Salient aspects of organizational climate which have been surfaced by scholars interested in understanding individuals' tendencies toward knowledge sharing are a climate in which individuals are highly trusting of others and of the organization (Hinds and Pfeffer 2003), an open climate with free-flowing information (Dixon 2000; Gibbert and Krause 2002; Hinds and Pfeffer 2003; Jarvenpaa and Staples 2000; Leonard and Sensiper 1998), a climate that is tolerant of well-reasoned failure (Leonard and Sensiper 1998), and a climate infused with pro-social norms (Constant et al. 1994, 1996; Hinds and Pfeffer 2003; Wasko and Faraj 2000).

Validating and Supplementing Prior Literature with Context-Specific Interviews

To develop an integrative view of the forces influencing individuals' willingness to share knowledge, we adopted TRA (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975) as an initial theoretical frame. Here, an individual's decision to engage in a specified behavior is determined by their intention to perform the behavior, which in turn is determined jointly by their attitude toward (reflecting their salient behavioral beliefs) and the subjective norm regarding (reflecting their normative beliefs and motivation to comply with these beliefs) the behavior.

Since TRA can be applied to virtually any behavior, the nature of the beliefs operative for a particular behavior are left unspecified. In a mature field of study where the beliefs that underlie a focal behavior are well specified, prior literature is usually a sufficient source for identifying the relevant beliefs (as well as their motivational drivers). However, in our study, the existing understanding of the factors that shape individuals' intentions to engage in knowledge sharing is anything but mature. Consequently, we interviewed executives leading knowledge-management initiatives within their organizations to validate--and supplement, if needed--the motivational drivers identified from the existing literature.

The interviews were conducted with either the chief knowledge officers or chief information officers in five Korean organizations: Samsung Economic Research Institute, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Samsung Display Devices, IBM-Korea, and Accenture-Korea. As prescribed techniques preclude prompting interviewees (Fishbein 1971; Ryan and Bonfield 1975), these interviews began with asking what each organization had done regarding knowledge management. This was followed by a few very general questions: What led the organization to implement its knowledge management initiatives? What were the critical success factors or drivers of the initiatives? What difficulties did the organization face in inducing its employees to contribute knowledge within the initiatives? In essence, the interviews were very open-ended.

Through thematic analysis of the interview scripts (Miles and Huberman 1994), we codified notes and clustered issues into factors, and organized the results into general conceptual themes. The themes capture a set of factors that the interviewees had consistently emphasized as an influence on their employees' knowledge-sharing behaviors. In summary, the motivational forces surfaced via these interviews are the provision of incentives for knowledge sharing, the knowledge sharer's relationship with the knowledge recipient, feedback on shared knowledge from others, the management's commitment to knowledge-management initiatives, and the three...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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