Bridging intention and behavior of knowledge sharing

Purpose – This paper seeks to present an innovative scale that sheds light on the ways in which intentions to share explicit and tacit knowledge impact actual knowledge‐sharing behavior. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected from a total of 278 hi‐tech workers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the research model. Findings – SEM shows that the intention to share explicit knowledge influences explicit knowledge‐sharing behavior to an equal extent both directly and indirectly. By contrast tacit knowledge‐sharing behavior is influenced directly to a greater extent by the intention to share tacit knowledge and less indirectly by the intention to share explicit knowledge. Research limitations/implications – The study provides a potential tool that may be applied by managers for the purpose of measuring explicit and tacit knowledge‐sharing intention and behavior. Its limitations are due to the limited socio‐economic and geographic variability of the companies and people that were studied, which may need further studies to substantiate. Originality/value – Whereas there is a consensus as to the need for and the benefits of sharing knowledge, there are no tools for measuring the roots of sharing behavior. The scale presented here captures the underlying intention, measures it, and assesses the resulting behavior.