Helping as Mundane Knowledge Sharing: Do Bundled Help Request and Quiet Time Increase Performance?

On a daily level, knowledge is shared when one employee asks another for help. The positive effects of helping have been studied, but less is known about how helping can be made more efficient in terms of lowering the costs for the helpers. We investigated how two methods to channel knowledge sharing (bundled help requests and quiet time) affect helping efficiency. Bundling means that help requesters first collect some requests before asking; quiet time means that an organization defines time spans during which its employees must not interrupt and ask one another for help. We conducted a laboratory experiment and found that bundling increased the efficiency of helping, thereby increasing the combined performance of the helper and the help requester. Quiet time, however, decreased their combined performance. We discuss the implications of our findings for knowledge management research and practice.